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https://www.maricopeny.com/

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16-year-old activist, philanthropist, and "future president" Mari Copeny is on the front lines of tackling America's water crisis head on, and helping kids to embrace their power through equal opportunity. When the Flint Water Crisis began instead of feeling helpless Mari decided to use her voice to help out her community and to fight for the kids in Flint. Since then she has expanded her efforts to help communities across the nation dealing with toxic drinking water.

"My generation will fix this mess of a government. Watch us."

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16-year-old activist, philanthropist, and "future president" Mari Copeny is on the front lines of tackling America's water crisis head on, and helping kids to embrace their power through equal opportunity. When the Flint Water Crisis began instead of feeling helpless Mari decided to use her voice to help out her community and to fight for the kids in Flint.

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https://kaepernick7.com/

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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mao-Zedong

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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mahatma-Gandhi

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https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/angela-davis

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https://www.un.org/youthenvoy/vanessa-nakate/

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https://www.biography.com/musician/beyonce-knowles

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Historical biographies written for kids. Learn the life story and biography of influencial people: US Presidents, World Leaders, Inventors, Women, Artists, Civil Rights heroes.

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Kids learn about the biography of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play Major League Baseball. He was a Hall of Fame player for the Brooklyn Dodgers who wore number 42.

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Athlete

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Baseball is a funny game. Just ask Hanley Ramirez. One day you're an unknown teenager trying to catch the organization's eye, then a few years later you're a batting champion and MVP candidate. And just as quickly, you're a bum. Actually, that part isn't so funny. In Hanley's case, it cost him his job and his home. Once viewed as the future of the Miami Marlins, Hanley has switched coasts and is now at the crux of what his friends and fans believe can still be an incredible career. This is his story...

G ROWING UP

Hanley Ramirez was born on December 23, 1983 in Samana, Dominican Republic. His father, Toribio, fixed cars for a living. He was a quiet, well-liked man. Hanley's zest for life came from his mother, Isabel, who was always laughing and joking around. (Click here for today's sports birthdays.)

Like many young Dominican boys, Hanley was passionate about baseball. He dreamed of playing shortstop like Tony Fernandez and hitting homers like Pedro Guerrero. The only difference was that Hanley actually did. He was a big kid with a powerful arm and potent bat. At age five, in his first season of organized play, he led his league in home runs-and still has the plastic trophy to prove it.

Hanley's father saw how happy baseball made his son. Over the years, he and his wife made whatever sacrifices they had to in order to keep him moving up the ladder-as long as he kept up with his schoolwork. Their dream for Hanley was to one day study engineering, but he kept getting better and better at baseball.

Hanley started attracting the attention of scouts around the age of 15. He found the whole process curious. Why did they care? It was only when one of the other boys explained that you could get paid a lot of money for being a baseball player in the United States that Hanley began to see the game as a career. Another boy from Samana, Fernando Rodney, signed a deal with the Detroit Tigers. Suddenly, playing ball for a living didn't seem so crazy.

Hanley's biggest fan was Boston scout Levy Ochoa, who saw a five-tool player waiting to blossom. Hanley signed with the Red Sox for $55,000 in July of 2000.

He joined their team in the Dominican Summer League the following year. At age 17, he batted well over .400. He and Alberto Callaspo were the league's top two shortstops. It was around this time that Hanley set a goal for himself-he would buy his parents a house on the same street as Pedro Martinez, the man he hoped to play next to on the Red Sox one day.

Hanley found himself in Florida in 2002 as a member of the Ft. Myers Red Sox. He batted .341 with 20 extra-base hits in 45 games against Gulf Coast League hurlers. Hanley finshed the season with the Lowell Spinners of the NY-Penn League, where he posted a .371 average in 22 games.

ON THE RISE

The 2003 season saw Hanley make the jump at shortstop for the Augusta Green Jackets of the Class-A South Atlantic League. Playing for former major leaguer Russ Morman, Hanley batted .275 and swiped a team-best 36 bases. The club finished in last place, but Hanley was every bit as good as super prospect B. J. Upton, who starred for the Charleston River Dogs. The only black mark on Hanley's season was a 10-game suspension leveled after he gave his own dugout the one-finger peace sign during a game. He was still a kid and obviously needed some maturing.

In 2004, Hanley spent most of the year at Class-A Sarasota, where he hit a solid .310. After a much deserved promotion, he played the final month with the Portland Sea Dogs and matched his .310 average. The power the Red Sox hoped would develop was still missing, however, as Hanley hit just six homers at both stops.

Hanley returned to the Dominican Republic and tore it up in winter ball. David Ortiz, who played against him, told his teammates that Hanley was major league ready when he arrived in camp. The youngster certainly looked the part-he now stood a rock-solid 6-3 and weighed just a shade under 200 pounds.

Hanley trained with the big leaguers for the first time and spent hour after hour hanging around the cage, watching the Red Sox sluggers and asking for tips. He knew his days in the organization might be numbered, given that he was now stuck behind Edgar Renteria, whom Boston had signed to a four-year, $40 million contract that winter. Indeed, the team's plan was to let Hanley percolate in the minors until the trade deadline neared in July, at which point the club would swap him for the piece they needed to compete in the playoffs.

Hanley said all the right things to stay in a Boston uniform, including volunteering to play second base. But he was too good a shortstop to use on that side of the bag. After hitting at a .389 clip against major league arms, Hanley was shipped to Boston's minor league complex.

Hanley opened the year with the Sea Dogs, playing alongside Dustion Pedroia, Boston's top pick in the 2004 draft. Pedroia, a shortstop for Arizona State, moved to second. Hanly hit .271 with a lot of speed and enough pop to keep the organization happy. He looked ready for the big leagues.

That summer, Red Sox Nation was practically drooling at the thought of Hanley's promotion to the big club. A sore back kept his stats down somewhat, but when he spent a couple of off-days sightseeing in Boston that July, the rumor mill began churning wildly. With Johnny Damon in the walk year of his contract, there was talk that Hanley might be the Bosox centerfielder in 2006.

Fernando Rodney, 2007 Heritage

Later in the month, the Sea Dogs moved Hanley to second base for a week. Boston's Mark Bellhorn was barely over the Mendoza line and wasn't showing much with the glove, either. The Bosox fans began chattering again. It took a September injury to Kevin Youkilis, however, to clear the way for Hanley's long-awaited cup of coffee. He played two weeks in September, got two at-bats and whiffed both times.

Hanley went into the off-season wondering what his address would be come the '06 campaign. He did not have to wait long. On Thanksgiving the Red Sox and Marlins consummated a deal that sent Hanley and pitching prospect Anibal Sanchez to Florida in exchange for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell.

Hanley had a good spring with the Marlins and won the starting job at short. He got off to a .400 start in early April but stumbled badly in June. At one point, he was hitless in 29 straight at-bats.

Hanley got back into a groove in August and September, batting .341 in the final two months and keeping the Marlins within sniffing distance of a Wild Card berth. They faded over the season's last 10 days, however, and finished 78-84.

Hanley was part of a remarkable young team in Florida that year. To his right was Miguel Cabrera, an MVP candidate at age 23. To his left was second baseman Dan Uggla, who was snapped up in the Rule 5 draft after a sensational year at Double-A for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Cabrera batted a robust .339 with 50 doubles, 26 home runs and 114 RBIs. Uggla, meanwhil, hit for average and power all summer long and held his own at second base. He and Hanley became great friends. Completing the infield was another rookie, Mike Jacobs, picked up from the Mets during the team's Carlos Delgado salary dump. He proved a capable middle-of the-lineup hitter.

On the mound, Josh Johnson was among the NL's stingiest starters, while staff veteran Dontrelle Willis anchored the rotation. Sanchez, Hanley's old Boston teammate, joined the Marlins midway through the season and threw a no-hitter.

In the end, though, it was Hanley who stood out as the Marlins ' prize rookie. He had beefed up another 10 pounds or so and found his power stroke, blasting 46 doubles, 11 triples and 17 home runs. He also swiped 51 bases. Hanley settled into the leadoff spot and finished the year at .292.

Six weeks after Florida's season ended, Hanley got the news that he had been named N.L. Rookie of the Year. He edged Ryan Zimmerman and Uggla for the honor. Uggla ended up setting a record for home runs by a rookie second baseman with 27, but he had a horrible September, which may have tilted voters in Hanley's favor. Johnson, whose season ended early with a sore arm, finished fourth.

Hanley began the 2007 season hoping to improve on his Rookie of the Year numbers, something that he was constantly reminded almost never happens. His second year with the Marlins was tremendous. He hit .332 with 29 home runs and 51 steals, falling one home run short of becoming the third person in MLB history to hit 30 home runs and have at least 50 steals. He finished second in the league with 212 hits and 125 runs. Hanley finished the year in the Top 10 in batting, slugging, doubles and stolen bases.

MAKING HIS MARK

In 2008, Hanley became the face of the franchise. The Marlins traded their two marquee veterans, Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, to the Detroit Tigers. Hanley responded well to the pressure of being the club leader. He played in his first All-Star Game, starting for the NL and batting leadoff. He collected two hits in three trips to the plate.

Hanley also led the league in runs scored and cranked out a career-best 33 home runs. At age 24, he had all the earmarks of a future Hall of Famer. This no doubt prompted the Marlins to sign Hanley to a six-year, $70 million extension, giving him the biggest contract in team history.

Hanley hit his first career grand slam on Opening Day of 2009 against the Washington Nationals. Batting in the heart of the order, he saw lots more RBI opportunities during the year and drove in 106 runs to go along with a league-leading .342 average. The Marlins started fast and held onto to first place in the early part of the season. After dipping below .500 for several weeks, they regained their footing and pulled into second place behind the Phillies. They finished with a respectable 87 wins but could not close the gap on Philadelphia. After the season, Hanley finished as the runner-up to Albert Pujols in the MVP voting.

Hanley batted .300 for the fourth year in a row in 2010, but his power numbers dropped significantly. Even so, he started the All-Star Game for the third consecutive year. Early in the season, manager Fredi Gonzalez benched Hanley for not hustling after a ball that he had inadvertently kicked into the left field corner. The two never really saw eye to eye, and Gonzalez was fired a month later. The new manager, Edwin Rodriguez, failed to light a fire under the Marlins, who played .500 ball from wire to wire. Hanley nursed a sore elbow and shoulder much of the season, which accounted in part for the fall-off of his stats.

The shoulder pain continued to hamper Hanley in 2011, especially after he made a diving catch in a July game against the New York Mets. Offensively, it was already a lost season for him. He appeared in only 92 games and finished with a paltry .243 average and only 10 home runs.

Also affecting Hanley was the fact that he played without his longtime DP partner, Dan Uggla, who was traded to the Atlanta Braves for Omar Infante. The two were good at pushing each other, and it may not have been a coincidence that the batting averages of both players plummeted.

Hanley opted for shoulder surgery in the offseason and was ready to go by spring training. He had to learn to play a new position, as the acquisition of free agent Jose Reyes necessitated his moving to third base. Hanley said all the right things and was glad to have a table-setter in the lineup, but he wasn't happy about the move.

Although his power numbers improved, Hanley seemed to lack the fire he had displayed earlier in his career with the Marlins. Even so, with help from young stars Giancarlo Stanton and Emilio Bonifacio, the team (now representing the city of Miami) actually snuck into first place in early June. With new stars and a new stadium, Miami fans looked forward to a run at the division crown in the jumbled NL East. However, it was not to be. Seventeen losses in 20 games sent the Marlins tumbling into the cellar with a 34-40 record.

As the trade deadline approached, the Marlins decided they were sellers. Infante and Anibal Sanchez were shipped to Detroit. Gaby Sanchez went to the Pittsburgh Pirates. On July 25, the team announced a trade that sent Hanley to the Los Angeles Dodgers for pitching prospect Nate Eovaldi.

With shortstop Dee Gordon on the DL, Hanley got in a few games at his old position with Los Angeles, splitting time between short and third. He had two hits, including a triple and an RBI, inhis debut in Dodger blue, but his bat remained quiet in early August, as the Dodgers played tag with the San Francisco Giants at the top of the NL West. The fans hoped his first LA homer was a sign of things to come-it beat the Giants in an tense extra-inning game.

Once the top prospect in the game, Hanley now faces a crossroads in his career. Perhaps in Los Angeles, where Matt Kempp and Clayton Kershaw are the marquee names, he can shine once again now that he doesn't have the pressure of carrying a franchise by himself.

HANLEY THE PLAYER

Hanley surprised many with his home run output as a rookie. The power surge came courtesy of a quick, powerful stroke that he honed over the winter of 2005-06. Prior to that he had a longer swing and rarely hit the ball on the screws.

During his time with the Marlins, Hanley gravitated toward the middle of the lineup, but he also batted third on occasion. Wherever he batted, he remained one of the organization's top base-stealing threats. With the Dodgers, his responsibilities are different, but the club still encourages him to put his entire offensive arsenal on display.

Hanley has good range in the field and a very strong arm. Much like Alex Rodriwgues in the American League, he could have a very long and productive career as a third sacker if that's where he ends up.

© Copyright 2012 Black Book Partners, LLC. All rights reserved.

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read a full-length biography of marlins star hanley ramirez for free at jockbio.com

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get a comprehensive bio of florida shortstop hanley ramirez for free at jockbio.com

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Baseball is a funny game. Just ask Hanley Ramirez. One day you're an unknown teenager trying to catch the organization's eye, then a few years later you're a batting champion and MVP candidate. And just as quickly, you're a bum. Actually, that part isn't so funny.

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Labor Laws

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Photo: Arthur Schatz/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Quick Facts
"If you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and eat with him...The people who give you their food give you their heart.""If you want to remember me, organize!""The burdens of generations of poverty and powerlessness lie heavy in the fields of America. If we fail, there are those who will see violence as the shortcut to change.""Although we would like to see victory come soon, we are willing to wait. In this sense, time is our ally. We learned many years ago that the rich may have money, but the poor have time.""Farm workers are society's canaries. Farm workers-and their children-demonstrate the effects of pesticide poisoning before anyone else.""People forget that the soil is our sustenance. It is a sacred trust. It is what has worked for us for centuries.""Where we have organized ... injustices soon pass into history.""Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.""It's ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that fill your tables with abundance have nothing left for themselves.""Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.""We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure."

Name

Cesar Chavez

Birth Date

March 31, 1927

Death Date

April 23, 1993

Did You Know?

Tha name of the town that Cesar Chavez and his family moved to in California when he was a child was Sal Si Puedes, which translates to "escape if you can."

Did You Know?

At one point, Cesar Chavez fasted for 36 days for the rights of laborers.

Place of Birth

Yuma, Arizona

Place of Death

San Luis, Arizona

Full Name

Cesar Estrada Chavez

Cesar Chavez

Union leader and labor organizer Cesar Chavez dedicated his life to improving treatment, pay and working conditions for farm workers.

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"If you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and eat with him...The people who give you their food give you their heart." "If you want to remember me, organize!" "The burdens of generations of poverty and powerlessness lie heavy in the fields of America.

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Racial Equality

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Who Was Martin Luther King Jr?

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist who had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s.

Among his many efforts, King headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Through his activism and inspirational speeches, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African American citizens in the United States, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several other honors. He continues to be remembered as one of the most influential and inspirational African American leaders in history.

Early Life

Born as Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. was the middle child of Michael King Sr. and Alberta Williams King.

The King and Williams families had roots in rural Georgia. Martin Jr.'s grandfather, A.D. Williams, was a rural minister for years and then moved to Atlanta in 1893.

He took over the small, struggling Ebenezer Baptist church with around 13 members and made it into a forceful congregation. He married Jennie Celeste Parks and they had one child that survived, Alberta.

Martin Sr. came from a family of sharecroppers in a poor farming community. He married Alberta in 1926 after an eight-year courtship. The newlyweds moved to A.D.'s home in Atlanta.

Martin Sr. stepped in as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church upon the death of his father-in-law in 1931. He too became a successful minister and adopted the name Martin Luther King Sr. in honor of the German Protestant religious leader Martin Luther. In due time, Michael Jr. would follow his father's lead and adopt the name himself.
READ MORE: Martin Luther King Jr. and Martin Luther: The Parallels Between the Two Leaders
King had an older sister, Willie Christine, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. The King children grew up in a secure and loving environment. Martin Sr. was more the disciplinarian, while his wife's gentleness easily balanced out the father's strict hand.

Though they undoubtedly tried, King's parents couldn't shield him completely from racism. Martin Sr. fought against racial prejudice, not just because his race suffered, but because he considered racism and segregation to be an affront to God's will. He strongly discouraged any sense of class superiority in his children which left a lasting impression on Martin Jr.

Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, King entered public school at age five. In May 1936 he was baptized, but the event made little impression on him.

In May 1941, King was 12 years old when his grandmother, Jennie, died of a heart attack. The event was traumatic for King, more so because he was out watching a parade against his parents' wishes when she died. Distraught at the news, young King jumped from a second-story window at the family home, allegedly attempting suicide.

King attended Booker T. Washington High School, where he was said to be a precocious student. He skipped both the ninth and eleventh grades, and entered Morehouse College in Atlanta at age 15, in 1944. He was a popular student, especially with his female classmates, but an unmotivated student who floated through his first two years.

Although his family was deeply involved in the church and worship, King questioned religion in general and felt uncomfortable with overly emotional displays of religious worship. This discomfort continued through much of his adolescence, initially leading him to decide against entering the ministry, much to his father's dismay.

But in his junior year, King took a Bible class, renewed his faith and began to envision a career in the ministry. In the fall of his senior year, he told his father of his decision.

Education and Spiritual Growth

In 1948, King earned a sociology degree from Morehouse College and attended the liberal Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. He thrived in all his studies, and was valedictorian of his class in 1951, and elected student body president. He also earned a fellowship for graduate study.

But King also rebelled against his father's more conservative influence by drinking beer and playing pool while at college. He became involved with a white woman and went through a difficult time before he could break off the affair.

During his last year in seminary, King came under the guidance of Morehouse College President Benjamin E. Mays who influenced King's spiritual development. Mays was an outspoken advocate for racial equality and encouraged King to view Christianity as a potential force for social change. After being accepted at several colleges for his doctoral study, King enrolled at Boston University.

During the work on his doctorate, King met Coretta Scott, an aspiring singer and musician at the New England Conservatory school in Boston. They were married in June 1953 and had four children, Yolanda, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott and Bernice.

In 1954, while still working on his dissertation, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama. He completed his Ph.D. and earned his degree in 1955. King was only 25 years old.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

On March 2, 1955, a 15-year-old girl refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus in violation of local law. Teenager Claudette Colvin was then arrested and taken to jail.

At first, the local chapter of the NAACP felt they had an excellent test case to challenge Montgomery's segregated bus policy. But then it was revealed that Colvin was pregnant and civil rights leaders feared this would scandalize the deeply religious Black community and make Colvin (and, thus the group's efforts) less credible in the eyes of sympathetic white people.

On December 1, 1955, they got another chance to make their case. That evening, 42-year-old Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus to go home after an exhausting day at work. She sat in the first row of the "colored" section in the middle of the bus. As the bus traveled its route, all the seats in the white section filled up, then several more white passengers boarded the bus.

The bus driver noted that there were several white men standing and demanded that Parks and several other African Americans give up their seats. Three other African American passengers reluctantly gave up their places, but Parks remained seated.

The driver asked her again to give up her seat and again she refused. Parks was arrested and booked for violating the Montgomery City Code. At her trial a week later, in a 30-minute hearing, Parks was found guilty and fined $10 and assessed $4 court fee.

On the night that Parks was arrested, E.D. Nixon, head of the local NAACP chapter met with King and other local civil rights leaders to plan a Montgomery Bus Boycott. King was elected to lead the boycott because he was young, well-trained with solid family connections and had professional standing. But he was also new to the community and had few enemies, so it was felt he would have strong credibility with the Black community.

In his first speech as the group's president, King declared, "We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice."

King's skillful rhetoric put new energy into the civil rights struggle in Alabama. The bus boycott involved 382 days of walking to work, harassment, violence, and intimidation for Montgomery's African American community. Both King's and Nixon's homes were attacked.

But the African American community also took legal action against the city ordinance arguing that it was unconstitutional based on the Supreme Court's "separate is never equal" decision in Brown v. Board of Education. After being defeated in several lower court rulings and suffering large financial losses, the city of Montgomery lifted the law mandating segregated public transportation.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Flush with victory, African American civil rights leaders recognized the need for a national organization to help coordinate their efforts. In January 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy and 60 ministers and civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to harness the moral authority and organizing power of Black churches. They would help conduct non-violent protests to promote civil rights reform.

King's participation in the organization gave him a base of operation throughout the South, as well as a national platform. The organization felt the best place to start to give African Americans a voice was to enfranchise them in the voting process. In February 1958, the SCLC sponsored more than 20 mass meetings in key southern cities to register Black voters in the South. King met with religious and civil rights leaders and lectured all over the country on race-related issues.

In 1959, with the help of the American Friends Service Committee, and inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, King visited Gandhi's birthplace in India. The trip affected him in a profound way, increasing his commitment to America's civil rights struggle.

African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had studied Gandhi's teachings, became one of King's associates and counseled him to dedicate himself to the principles of nonviolence. Rustin served as King's mentor and advisor throughout his early activism and was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.
READ MORE: How Martin Luther King Jr. Took Inspiration From Gandhi Nonviolence
But Rustin was also a controversial figure at the time, being a homosexual with alleged ties to the Communist Party. Though his counsel was invaluable to King, many of his other supporters urged him to distance himself from Rustin.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. FACT CARD

Greensboro Sit-In

In February 1960, a group of African American students in North Carolina began what became known as the Greensboro sit-in movement.

The students would sit at racially segregated lunch counters in the city's stores. When asked to leave or sit in the colored section, they just remained seated, subjecting themselves to verbal and sometimes physical abuse.

The movement quickly gained traction in several other cities. In April 1960, the SCLC held a conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina with local sit-in leaders. King encouraged students to continue to use nonviolent methods during their protests.

Out of this meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed and for a time, worked closely with the SCLC. By August of 1960, the sit-ins had been successful in ending segregation at lunch counters in 27 southern cities.

By 1960, King was gaining national exposure. He returned to Atlanta to become co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church but also continued his civil rights efforts.

On October 19, 1960, King and 75 students entered a local department store and requested lunch-counter service but were denied. When they refused to leave the counter area, King and 36 others were arrested.

Realizing the incident would hurt the city's reputation, Atlanta's mayor negotiated a truce and charges were eventually dropped. But soon after, King was imprisoned for violating his probation on a traffic conviction.

The news of his imprisonment entered the 1960 presidential campaign when candidate John F. Kennedy made a phone call to Coretta Scott King. Kennedy expressed his concern for King's harsh treatment for the traffic ticket and political pressure was quickly set in motion. King was soon released.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In the spring of 1963, King organized a demonstration in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. With entire families in attendance, city police turned dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators.

King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, but the event drew nationwide attention. However, King was personally criticized by Black and white clergy alike for taking risks and endangering the children who attended the demonstration.

In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, King eloquently spelled out his theory of non-violence: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community, which has constantly refused to negotiate, is forced to confront the issue."

'I Have a Dream' Speech

By the end of the Birmingham campaign, King and his supporters were making plans for a massive demonstration on the nation's capital composed of multiple organizations, all asking for peaceful change.

On August 28, 1963, the historic March on Washington drew more than 200,000 people in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. It was here that King made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, emphasizing his belief that someday all men could be brothers

"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." - Martin Luther King, Jr. / "I Have A Dream" speech, August 28, 1963

The rising tide of civil rights agitation produced a strong effect on public opinion. Many people in cities not experiencing racial tension began to question the nation's Jim Crow laws and the near-century of second-class treatment of African American citizens.
READ MORE: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Famous Speech Almost Didn't Have the Phrase 'I Have a Dream'
Nobel Peace Prize

This resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, authorizing the federal government to enforce desegregation of public accommodations and outlawing discrimination in publicly owned facilities. This also led to King receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

King's struggle continued throughout the 1960s. Often, it seemed as though the pattern of progress was two steps forward and one step back.

On March 7, 1965, a civil rights march, planned from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama's capital, turned violent as police with nightsticks and tear gas met the demonstrators as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

King was not in the march, however, the attack was televised showing horrifying images of marchers being bloodied and severely injured. Seventeen demonstrators were hospitalized in a day that would be called " Bloody Sunday."

A second march was canceled due to a restraining order to prevent the march from taking place. A third march was planned and this time King made sure he was part of it. Not wanting to alienate southern judges by violating the restraining order, a different approach was taken.

On March 9, 1965, a procession of 2,500 marchers, both Black and white, set out once again to cross the Pettus Bridge and confronted barricades and state troopers. Instead of forcing a confrontation, King led his followers to kneel in prayer and they then turned back.

Alabama governor George Wallace continued to try to prevent another march until President Lyndon B. Johnson pledged his support and ordered U.S. Army troops and the Alabama National Guard to protect the protestors.

On March 21, approximately 2,000 people began a march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capitol. On March 25, the number of marchers, which had grown to an estimated 25,000, gathered in front of the state capitol where King delivered a televised speech. Five months after the historic peaceful protest, President Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

From late 1965 through 1967, King expanded his civil rights efforts into other larger American cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles. But he met with increasing criticism and public challenges from young Black power leaders.

King's patient, non-violent approach and appeal to white middle-class citizens alienated many Black militants who considered his methods too weak, too late and ineffective.

To address this criticism, King began making a link between discrimination and poverty, and he began to speak out against the Vietnam War. He felt that America's involvement in Vietnam was politically untenable and the government's conduct in the war discriminatory to the poor. He sought to broaden his base by forming a multi-racial coalition to address the economic and unemployment problems of all disadvantaged people.

Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr.?

By 1968, the years of demonstrations and confrontations were beginning to wear on King. He had grown tired of marches, going to jail, and living under the constant threat of death. He was becoming discouraged at the slow progress of civil rights in America and the increasing criticism from other African American leaders.

Plans were in the works for another march on Washington to revive his movement and bring attention to a widening range of issues. In the spring of 1968, a labor strike by Memphis sanitation workers drew King to one last crusade.

On April 3, he gave his final and what proved to be an eerily prophetic speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," in which he told supporters at the Mason Temple in Memphis, "I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

The next day, while standing on a balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by a sniper's bullet. The shooter, a malcontent drifter and former convict named James Earl Ray, was eventually apprehended after a two-month, international manhunt.

The assassination sparked riots and demonstrations in more than 100 cities across the country. In 1969, Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He died in prison on April 23, 1998.

READ MORE: The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Legacy

King's life had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States. Years after his death, he is the most widely known African American leader of his era.

His life and work have been honored with a national holiday, schools and public buildings named after him, and a memorial on Independence Mall in Washington, D.C.

But his life remains controversial as well. In the 1970s, FBI files, released under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed that he was under government surveillance, and suggested his involvement in adulterous relationships and communist influences.

Over the years, extensive archival studies have led to a more balanced and comprehensive assessment of his life, portraying him as a complex figure: flawed, fallible and limited in his control over the mass movements with which he was associated, yet a visionary leader who was deeply committed to achieving social justice through nonviolent means.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday honoring the legacy of the slain civil rights leader.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first celebrated in 1986, and in all 50 states in 2000.

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Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist who had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s. Among his many efforts, King headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

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Human Rights

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Black Lives Matter ( BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people and to promote anti-racism. Its primary concerns are police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people. The movement began in response to the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Rekia Boyd, among others. BLM and its related organizations typically advocate for various policy changes related to black liberation and criminal justice reform. While there are specific organizations that label themselves "Black Lives Matter", such as the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the overall movement is a decentralized network with no formal hierarchy. As of 2021, there are about 40 chapters in the United States and Canada. The slogan "Black Lives Matter" itself has not been trademarked by any group.

In 2013, activists and friends Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi originated the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin. Black Lives Matter became nationally recognized for street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two more African Americans, Michael Brown-resulting in protests and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri-and Eric Garner in New York City. Since the Ferguson protests, participants in the movement have demonstrated against the deaths of numerous other African Americans by police actions or while in police custody. In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter activists became involved in the 2016 United States presidential election.

The movement gained international attention during global protests in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. An estimated 15 to 26 million people participated in Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, making it one of the largest protest movements in the country's history. Despite being characterized by opponents as violent, the overwhelming majority of BLM demonstrations have been peaceful.

The popularity of Black Lives Matter has shifted over time, largely due to changing perceptions among white Americans. In 2020, 67% of adults in the United States expressed support for the movement, declining to 51% of U.S. adults in 2023. Support among people of color has, however, held strong, with 81% of African Americans, 61% of Hispanics and 63% of Asian Americans expressing support for Black Lives Matter as of 2023.

Structure and organization

Decentralization

The phrase "Black Lives Matter" can refer to a Twitter hashtag, a slogan, a social movement, a political action committee, or a loose confederation of groups advocating for racial justice. As a movement, Black Lives Matter is grassroots and decentralized, and leaders have emphasized the importance of local organizing over national leadership. The structure differs from previous black movements, like the Civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Such differences have been the subject of scholarly literature. Activist DeRay McKesson has commented that the movement "encompasses all who publicly declare that black lives matter and devote their time and energy accordingly."

In 2013, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi formed the Black Lives Matter Network. Garza described the network as an online platform that existed to provide activists with a shared set of principles and goals. Local Black Lives Matter chapters are asked to commit to the organization's list of guiding principles but are autonomous, operating without a central structure or hierarchy. Garza has commented that the Network was not interested in "policing who is and who is not part of the movement." As of 2021, there are about 40 chapters in the United States and Canada.

The loose structure of Black Lives Matter has contributed to confusion in the press and among activists, as actions or statements from chapters or individuals are sometimes attributed to "Black Lives Matter" as a whole. Matt Pearce, writing for the Los Angeles Times, commented that "the words could be serving as a political rallying cry or referring to the activist organization. Or it could be the fuzzily applied label used to describe a wide range of protests and conversations focused on racial inequality."

On at least one occasion, a person represented as Managing Director of BLM Global Network has released a statement represented to be on behalf of that organization.

Broader movement

Concurrently, a broader movement involving several other organizations and activists emerged under the banner of "Black Lives Matter", as well. In 2015, Johnetta Elzie, DeRay Mckesson, Brittany Packnett, and Samuel Sinyangwe initiated Campaign Zero, aimed at promoting policy reforms to end police brutality. The campaign released a ten-point plan for reforms to policing, with recommendations including: ending broken windows theory policing, increasing community oversight of police departments, and creating stricter guidelines for the use of force. The New York Times reporter, John Eligon, wrote that some activists expressed concerns that the campaign was overly focused on legislative remedies for police violence.

Black Lives Matter also voices support for various movements and causes beyond police brutality, including LGBTQ activism, feminism, immigration reform, and economic justice.

Movement for Black Lives

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is a coalition of more than 50 groups representing the interests of black communities across the United States. Members include the Black Lives Matter Network, the National Conference of Black Lawyers, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Endorsed by groups such as Color of Change, Race Forward, Brooklyn Movement Center, PolicyLink, Million Women March Cleveland, and ONE DC, the coalition receives communications and tactical support from an organization named Blackbird.

On July 24, 2015, the movement initially convened at Cleveland State University where between 1,500 and 2,000 activists gathered to participate in open discussions and demonstrations. The conference in Cleveland, Ohio initially attempted to "strategize ways for the Movement for Black Lives to hold law enforcement accountable for their actions on a national level". However, the conference resulted in the formation of a much more significant social movement. At the end of the three-day conference, on July 26, the Movement for Black Lives initiated a yearlong "process of convening local and national groups to create a United Front". This year long process ultimately resulted in the establishment of an organizational platform that articulates the goals, demands, and policies which the Movement for Black Lives supports in order to achieve the "liberation" of black communities across America.

In 2016, the Ford Foundation announced plans to fund the M4BL Movement for Black Lives in a "six-year investments" plan, further partnering up with others to found the Black-led Movement Fund. The sum donated by the Ford Foundation and the other donors to M4BL was reported as $100 million by The Washington Times in 2016 (equivalent to $127 million in 2023); another donation of $33 million (equivalent to $42 million) to M4BL was reportedly issued by the Open Society Foundations.

In 2016, M4BL called for decarceration in the United States, reparations for harms related to slavery, and more recently, specific remedies for redlining in housing, education policy, mass incarceration and food insecurity. It also called for an end to mass surveillance, investment in public education, not incarceration, and community control of the police: empowering residents in communities of color to hire and fire police officers and issue subpoenas, decide disciplinary consequences and exercise control over city funding of police.

reported in 2015 that the Democracy Alliance, a gathering of Democratic-Party donors, planned to meet with leaders of several groups who were endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement. According to Politico, Solidaire, the donor coalition focusing on "movement building" and led by Texas oil fortune heir Leah Hunt-Hendrix, a member of the Democracy Alliance, had donated more than $200,000 to the BLM movement by 2015.

According to The Economist, between May 2020 and December 2020, donations to Black Lives Matter related causes amounted to $10.6 billion (equivalent to $12 billion in 2023). The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, one of the main organizations coordinating organizing and mobilization efforts across the reported raising $90 million in 2020 (equivalent to $106 million in 2023), including a substantial number of individual donations online, with an average donation of $30.76 (equivalent to $36.21).

Strategies and tactics

Black Lives Matter originally used various social media platforms-including hashtag activism-to reach thousands of people rapidly. Since then, Black Lives Matter has embraced a diversity of tactics. Black Lives Matter protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful; when violence does occur, it is often committed by counter-protesters. Despite this, opponents often try to portray the movement as violent.

Internet and social media

In 2014, the American Dialect Society chose #BlackLivesMatter as their word of the year. Yes! Magazine picked #BlackLivesMatter as one of the twelve hashtags that changed the world in 2014. From July 2013 through May 1, 2018, the hashtag "#BlackLivesMatter" had been tweeted over 30 million times, an average of 17,002 times per day. By June 10, 2020, it had been tweeted roughly 47.8 million times, with the period of July 7-17, 2016 having the highest usage, at nearly 500,000 tweets a day. This period also saw an increase in tweets using the hashtags "#BlueLivesMatter" and "#AllLivesMatter". On May 28, 2020, there were nearly 8.8 million tweets with the hashtag, and the average had increased to 3.7 million a day.

Direct action

BLM generally engages in direct action tactics that make people uncomfortable enough that they must address the issue. BLM has been known to build power through protest and rallies. BLM has also staged die-ins and held one during the 2015 Twin Cities Marathon.

Political slogans used during demonstrations include the eponymous "Black Lives Matter", " Hands up, don't shoot" (a later discredited reference attributed to Michael Brown), " I can't breathe" (referring to Eric Garner and later George Floyd), "White silence is violence", " No justice, no peace", and "Is my son next?", among others.

According to a 2018 study, "Black Lives Matter protests are more likely to occur in localities where more black people have previously been killed by police."

Media, music and other cultural impacts

Since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, the movement has been depicted and documented in film, song, television, literature, and the visual arts. A number of media outlets are providing material related to racial injustice and the Black Lives Matter movement. Published books, novels, and TV shows have increased in popularity in 2020. Songs, such as Michael Jackson's " They Don't Care About Us" and Kendrick Lamar's " Alright", have been widely used as a rallying call at demonstrations.

The short documentary film, Bars4Justice, features brief appearances by various activists and recording artists affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement. The film is an official selection of the 24th Annual Pan African Film Festival. Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement is a 2016 American television documentary film, starring Jesse Williams, about the Black Lives Matter movement.

The February 2015 issue of magazine and the cover was devoted to Black Lives Matter. In December 2015, BLM was a contender for the magazine Person of the Year award, coming in fourth of the eight candidates.

A number of cities have painted murals of "Black Lives Matter" in large letters on their streets. The cities include Washington, D.C., Dallas, Denver, Charlotte, Seattle, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Birmingham, Alabama.

Allegations of use of excessive force by police

According to The Washington Post, police officers shot and killed 1,001 people in the United States in 2019. About half of those killed were white, and one quarter were black, making the rate of deaths for black Americans (31 fatal shootings per million) more than twice as high as the rate for white Americans (13 fatal shootings per million). The Washington Post also counts 13 unarmed black Americans shot dead by police in 2019.

A 2015 study by Cody Ross, UC Davis found "significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans" by police. The study found that unarmed African Americans had 3.49 times the probability of being shot compared to unarmed whites, although in some jurisdictions the risk could be as much as 20 times higher. The study found that 2.79 more armed blacks were shot than unarmed blacks. The study also found that the documented county-level racial bias in police shootings could not be explained by differences in local crime rates.

A 2019 study by Cesario et al. published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that after adjusting for crime, there was "no systematic evidence of anti-black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects". However, a 2020 study by Cody Ross et al. criticizes the data analysis used in the Cesario et al. study. Using the same data set for police shootings in 2015 and 2016, Ross et al. conclude that there is significant racial bias in police shooting cases involving unarmed black suspects. This bias is not seen when suspects were armed.

A 2019 study in concluded that black people were actually less likely than white people to be killed by police, based on the death rates in police encounters. The authors later retracted the paper because although "our data and statistical approach were appropriate for investigating whether officer characteristics are related to the race of civilians fatally shot by police," the paper had been "cited as providing support for the idea that there are no racial biases in fatal shootings, or policing in general" whereas in fact their analyses "are inadequate to address racial disparities in the probability of being shot."

Another study found that such conclusions were erroneous due to Simpson's paradox. According to the paper, while it was true that white people were more likely to be killed in a police encounter, overall black people were still being discriminated against because they were more likely to have interactions with the police due to structural racism. They are more likely to be stopped for more petty crimes or for no crime at all. Conversely, white people interact with police more rarely, and often for more serious crimes such as shootings, where police are more likely to use force. The same paper also backed up the findings of Ross and Fryer, and concluded that overall rate of death was a much more useful statistic than the rate of death in encounters.

Disproportionate policing of Black Lives Matter events

Black Lives Matter protesters are themselves sometimes subject to excessive policing of the kind against which they are demonstrating. In May 2020, in addition to police, 43,350 military troops were deployed against Black Lives Matter protesters nationally. Military surveillance aircraft were deployed against subsequent Black Lives Matter protests. Observers, such as U.S. President Joe Biden, have noted that violent far-right mobilizations, including the 2021 United States Capitol attack, attracted smaller and more passive police presences than peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. In November 2015, a police officer in Oregon was removed from street duty following a social media post in which he said he would have to "babysit these fools", in reference to a planned BLM event.

Timeline of notable events and demonstrations in the United States

In 2014, Black Lives Matter demonstrated against the deaths of numerous African Americans by police actions, including those of Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Laquan McDonald, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, Antonio Martin, and Jerame Reid, among others.

During the Labor Day weekend in August, Black Lives Matter organized a "Freedom Ride", that brought more than 500 African-Americans from across the United States into Ferguson, Missouri, to support the work being done on the ground by local organizations. The movement continued to be involved in the Ferguson protests, following the killing of Michael Brown. The protests at times came into conflict with local and state police departments, who typically responded in an armed manner. At one point the National Guard was called in and a state of emergency was declared.

In November, a New York City Police Department officer shot and killed, Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old African-American man. Gurley's death was later protested by Black Lives Matter in New York City. In Oakland, California, fourteen Black Lives Matter activists were arrested after they stopped a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train for more than an hour on Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year. The protest, led by Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, was organized in response to the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown.

Also in November, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer. Rice's death has also been cited as contributing to "sparking" the Black Lives Matter movement.

In December, two to three thousand people gathered at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, to protest the killings of unarmed black men by police. The police at the mall were equipped with riot gear and bomb-sniffing dogs; at least twenty members of the protest were arrested. Management said that they were "extremely disappointed that organizers of Black Lives Matter protest chose to ignore our stated policy and repeated reminders that political protests and demonstrations are not allowed on Mall of America property".

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, BLM protested the police killing of Dontre Hamilton, who died in April. Black Lives Matter protested the killing of John Crawford III. The Murder of Renisha McBride was protested by Black Lives Matter.

In 2015, Black Lives Matter demonstrated against the deaths of numerous African Americans by police actions, including those of Charley Leundeu Keunang, Tony Robinson, Anthony Hill, Meagan Hockaday, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, William Chapman, Jonathan Sanders, Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBose, Jeremy McDole, Corey Jones, and Jamar Clark as well Dylann Roof's murder of The Charleston Nine.

In April, Black Lives Matter across the United States protested over the death of Freddie Gray which included the 2015 Baltimore protests. The National Guard was called in. After the killing of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina, Black Lives Matter protested Scott's death and called for Civilian oversight of police.

In May, a protest by BLM in San Francisco was part of a nationwide protest, SayHerName, decrying the police killing of black women and girls, which included the deaths of Meagan Hockaday, Aiyana Jones, Rekia Boyd, and others. In Cleveland, Ohio, after an officer was acquitted at trial in the Killing of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, BLM protested. In Madison, Wisconsin, BLM protested after the officer was not charged in the killing of Tony Robinson.

In June, after Dylann Roof's shooting in a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, BLM across the country marched, protested and held vigil for several days after the shooting. BLM was part of a march for peace on the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge in South Carolina. After the Charleston shooting, a number of memorials to the Confederate States of America were graffitied with "Black Lives Matter" or otherwise vandalized. Around 800 people protested in McKinney, Texas after a video was released showing an officer pinning a girl-at a pool party in McKinney, Texas-to the ground with his knees.

In July, BLM activists across the United States began protests over the death of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman, who was allegedly found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas. In Cincinnati, Ohio, BLM rallied and protested the death of Samuel DuBose after he was shot and killed by a University of Cincinnati police officer. In Newark, New Jersey, over a thousand BLM activists marched against police brutality, racial injustice, and economic inequality. Also in July, BLM protested the death of Jonathan Sanders who died while being arrested by police in Mississippi.

One-year commemoration of the killing of Michael Brown and the Ferguson unrest at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, August 2015

In August, BLM organizers held a rally in Washington, D.C., calling for a stop to violence against transgender women. In Charlotte, North Carolina, after a judge declared a mistrial in the trial of a white Charlotte police officer who killed an unarmed black man, Jonathan Ferrell, BLM protested and staged die-ins. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Janelle Monáe, Jidenna, and other BLM activists marched through North Philadelphia to bring awareness to police brutality and Black Lives Matter. Around August 9, the first anniversary of Michael Brown's death, BLM rallied, held vigil and marched in St. Louis and across the country.

In September, over five hundred BLM protesters in Austin, Texas rallied against police brutality, and several briefly carried protest banners onto Interstate 35. In Baltimore, Maryland, BLM activists marched and protested as hearings began in the Freddie Gray police brutality case. In Sacramento, California, about eight hundred BLM protesters rallied to support a California State Senate bill that would increase police oversight. BLM protested the killing of Jeremy McDole.

In October, Black Lives Matter activists were arrested during a protest of a police chiefs conference in Chicago. "Rise Up October" straddled the Black Lives Matter Campaign, and brought several protests. Quentin Tarantino and Cornel West, participating in "Rise Up October", decried police violence.

In November, BLM activists protested after Jamar Clark was shot by Minneapolis Police Department. A continuous protest was organized at the Minneapolis 4th Precinct Police. During the encamped protest, protesters, and outside agitators clashed with police, vandalized the station and attempted to ram the station with an SUV. Later that month a march was organized to honor Jamar Clark, from the 4th Precinct to downtown Minneapolis. After the march, a group of men carrying firearms and body armor appeared and began calling the protesters racial slurs according to a spokesperson for Black Lives Matter. After protesters asked the armed men to leave, the men opened fire, shooting five protesters. All injuries required hospitalization, but were not life-threatening. The men fled the scene only to be found later and arrested. The three men arrested were young and white, and observers called them white supremacists. In February 2017, one of the men arrested, Allen Scarsella, was convicted of a dozen felony counts of assault and riot in connection with the shooting. Based in part on months of racist messages Scarsella had sent his friends before the shooting, the judge rejected arguments by his defense that Scarsella was "naïve" and sentenced him in April 2017 to 15 years out of a maximum 20-year sentence.

In 2016, Black Lives Matter demonstrated against the deaths of numerous African Americans by police actions, including those of Bruce Kelley Jr., Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Joseph Mann, Abdirahman Abdi, Paul O'Neal, Korryn Gaines, Sylville Smith, Terence Crutcher, Keith Lamont Scott, Alfred Olango, and Deborah Danner, among others.

In January, hundreds of BLM protesters marched in San Francisco to protest the December 2, 2015, shooting death of Mario Woods, who was shot by San Francisco Police officers. The march was held during a Super Bowl event. BLM held protests, community meetings, teach-ins, and direct actions across the country with the goal of "reclaim[ing] the radical legacy of Martin Luther King Jr."

On July 5, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot several times at point-blank range while pinned to the ground by two white Baton Rouge Police Department officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On the night of July 5, more than 100 demonstrators in Baton Rouge shouted, "no justice, no peace," set off fireworks, and blocked an intersection to protest Sterling's death. On July 6, Black Lives Matter held a candlelight vigil in Baton Rouge, with chants of "We love Baton Rouge" and calls for justice.

On July 6, Philando Castile was fatally shot by Jeronimo Yanez, a St. Anthony, Minnesota police officer, after being pulled over in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul. Castile was driving a car with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter as passengers when he was pulled over by Yanez and another officer. According to his girlfriend, after being asked for his license and registration, Castile told the officer he was licensed to carry a weapon and had one in the car. She stated: "The officer said don't move. As he was putting his hands back up, the officer shot him in the arm four or five times." She live-streamed a video on Facebook in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Following the fatal shooting of Castile, BLM protested throughout Minnesota and the United States.

On July 7, a BLM protest was held in Dallas, Texas that was organized to protest the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. At the end of the peaceful protest, Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire in an ambush, killing five police officers and wounding seven others and two civilians. The gunman was then killed by a robot-delivered bomb. Before he died, according to police, Johnson said that "he was upset about Black Lives Matter", and that "he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers." Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and other conservative lawmakers blamed the shootings on the Black Lives Matter movement. The Black Lives Matter network released a statement denouncing the shootings. On July 8, more than 100 people were arrested at Black Lives Matter protests across the United States.

In the first half of July, there were at least 112 protests in 88 American cities. On July 13, NBA stars LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, and Dwyane Wade opened the 2016 ESPY Awards with a Black Lives Matter message. On July 26, Black Lives Matter held a protest in Austin, Texas, to mark the third anniversary of the shooting death of Larry Jackson Jr. On July 28, Chicago Police Department officers shot Paul O'Neal in the back and killed him following a car chase. After the shooting, hundreds marched in Chicago, Illinois.

In August, several professional athletes began participating in National Anthem protests. The protests began in the National Football League (NFL) after Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers sat during the anthem, as opposed to the tradition of standing, before his team's third preseason game of 2016. During a post-game interview he explained his position stating, "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder," a protest widely interpreted as in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. The protests have generated mixed reactions and have since spread to other U.S. sports leagues.

In September, BLM protested the shooting deaths by police officers of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Charlotte Observer reported "The protesters began to gather as night fell, hours after the shooting. They held themed signs that said 'Stop Killing Us' and 'Black Lives Matter,' and they chanted 'No justice, no peace.' The scene was sometimes chaotic and tense, with water bottles and stones chucked at police lines, but many protesters called for peace and implored their fellow demonstrators not to act violently." Multiple nights of protests in September and October were held in El Cajon, California, following the killing of Alfred Olango.

In the same month Virginia Commonwealth University's (VCU) James Branch Cabell Library focused on a month-long schedule of events relating to African-American history and showed photos from the church's "Black Lives Matter" exhibition on its outdoor screen. The VCU schedule of events also included: the Real Life Film Series The Angry Heart: The Impact of Racism on Heart Disease among African-Americans; Keith Knight presented the 14th Annual VCU Libraries Black History Month lecture; Lawrence Ross, author of the book Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America's Campuses talked about how his book related to the "Black Lives Matter" movement; and Velma P. Scantlebury, M.D., the first black female transplant surgeon in the United States, discussed "Health Equity in Kidney Transplantation: Experiences from a surgeon's perspective."

Black Lives Matter protested the killing of Jocques Clemmons which occurred in Nashville, Tennessee on February 10, 2017. On May 12, 2017, a day after Glenn Funk, the district attorney of Davidson County decided not to prosecute police officer Joshua Lippert, the Nashville chapter of BLM held a demonstration near the Vanderbilt University campus all the way to the residence of Nashville mayor Megan Barry.

On September 27 at the College of William & Mary, students associated with Black Lives Matter protested an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) event because the ACLU had fought for the right of the Unite the Right rally to be held in Charlottesville, Virginia. William & Mary's president Taylor Reveley responded with a statement defending the college's commitment to open debate.

In February and March 2018, as part of its social justice focus, First Unitarian Church of Richmond, Virginia in Richmond, Virginia presented its Second Annual Black Lives Matter Art Exhibition. Works of art in the exhibition were projected at scheduled hours on the large exterior screen (jumbotron) at Virginia Commonwealth University's Cabell Library. Artists with art in the exhibition were invited to discuss their work in the Black Lives Matter show as it was projected at an evening forum in a small amphitheater at VCU's Hibbs Hall. They were also invited to exhibit afterward at a local showing of the 1961 film adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun.

In April, CNN reported that the largest Facebook account claiming to be a part of the "Black Lives Matter" movement was a "scam" tied to a white man in Australia. The account, with 700,000 followers, linked to fundraisers that raised $100,000 or more, purportedly for U.S. Black Lives Matter causes; however, some of the money was instead transferred to Australian banks accounts, according to CNN. Facebook has suspended the offending page.

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old African American man, was murdered while jogging in Glynn County, Georgia. Arbery had been pursued and confronted by three white residents driving two vehicles, including a father and son who were armed. All three men were indicted on nine counts, including felony murder.

On March 13, Louisville police officers knocked down the apartment door of 26-year-old African American Breonna Taylor, serving a no-knock search warrant for drug suspicions. After her boyfriend shot a police officer in the leg, Police fired several shots which led to her death. Her boyfriend called 911 and said, "someone kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend". Protests were held in Louisville with calls for police reform.

George Floyd protests

At the end of May, spurred on by a rash of racially charged events including those above, over 450 major protests were held in cities and towns across the United States and three continents. The breaking point was due primarily to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, eventually charged with second-degree murder after a video circulated showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes while Floyd pleaded for his life, repeating: " I can't breathe." Following protesters' demands for additional prosecutions, three other officers were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder.

Black Lives Matter organized rallies in the United States and worldwide from May 30 onwards, with protesters enacting Floyd's final moments, many lying down in streets and on bridges, yelling "I can't breathe," while others marched by the thousands, some carrying signs that read, "Tell your brother in blue, don't shoot"-"Who do you call when the murderer wears a badge?" and "Justice for George Floyd." While global in nature and supported by several unassociated organizations, the Black Lives Matter movement has been inextricably linked to these monumental protests. Black Lives Matter called to " defund the police", a slogan with varying interpretations from police abolition to divestment from police and prisons to reinvestment in social services in communities of color. In 2020, NPR reported that the Washington D.C. Black Lives Matter chapter's demands were defunding the police, halting the construction of new jails, decriminalizing sex work, removing police from schools, exonerating protesters and abolishing cash bail in Maryland.

From May 26 to August 22, there were more than 7,750 BLM-linked demonstrations in over 2,240 locations throughout the United States.

A vigil was held for the death of Keenan Anderson who was killed by a police officer of the Los Angeles Police Department. Anderson was the cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors. The releasing of camera footage regarding the death of Tyre Nichols in January 2023 led to protests in Memphis. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network spoke on the matter upon the release of bodycam footage.

A ruling made by the Supreme Court of Alabama continues to prevent most police body camera footage, including that related to Joseph Pettaway who bled to death in 2018 after being bitten by a police dog, from being released to the public. In December 2022 Judge Jerusha Adams again blocked the release of video footage related to Pettaways' death.

International movement

In 2015, after the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, black activists around the world modeled efforts for reform on Black Lives Matter and the Arab Spring. This international movement has been referred to as the "Black Spring". Connections have also been forged with parallel international efforts such as the Dalit rights movement.

Following the death of Ms Dhu in police custody in August 2014, protests often made reference to the BLM movement. In July 2016, a BLM rally was organized in Melbourne, Australia, which 3,500 people attended. The protest also emphasized the issues of mistreatment of Aboriginal Australians by the Australian police and government.

In early June 2020, soon after the George Floyd protests in the US, protests took place in Australia, with many of them focusing on the local issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody, racism in Australia and other injustices faced by Indigenous Australians. Cricketer Michael Holding criticized Australia, as well as England, for refusing to take a knee in support of Black Lives Matter during cricket matches.

Blacks in Brazil suffer from economic marginalization, state violence, discrimination, and lower life-expectancy. In June 2020, two Black children, 5-year-old Miguel Otávio Santana da Silva and 14-year-old João Pedro Matos Pinto, died in Brazil. Miguel Otávio Santana da Silva was under the watch of the white boss of his mother when he fell off the balcony of a building. João Pedro Matos Pinto was shot in the back by police in Rio de Janeiro during a raid where the police discharged seventy shots. He was killed the same week as George Floyd. Their deaths prompted protests in cities across the country. The slogan "Black Lives Matter" was translated to "Vidas Negras Importam" in Portuguese. Protests continued throughout 2020 and were renewed at the end of the year after supermarket security guards beat 40-year-old welder João Alberto Silveira Freitas to death in Porto Alegre.

In July 2015, BLM protesters shut down Allen Road in Toronto, Ontario, protesting the shooting deaths of two black men in the metropolitan area-Andrew Loku and Jermaine Carby-at the hands of police. In September, BLM activists shut down streets in Toronto, citing police brutality and solidarity with "marginalized black lives" as reason for the shutdown. Black Lives Matter was a featured part of the Take Back the Night event in Toronto.

In June 2016, Black Lives Matter was selected by Pride Toronto as the honored group in that year's Pride parade, during which they staged a sit-in to block the parade from moving forward for approximately half an hour. They issued several demands for Pride to adjust its relationship with LGBTQ people of color, including stable funding and a suitable venue for the established Blockorama event, improved diversity in the organization's staff and volunteer base, and that Toronto Police officers be banned from marching in the parade in uniform. Pride executive director Mathieu Chantelois signed BLM's statement of demand, but later asserted that he had signed it only to end the sit-in and get the parade moving, and had not agreed to honor the demands. In late August 2016, the Toronto chapter protested outside the Special Investigations Unit in Mississauga in response to the death of Abdirahman Abdi, who died during an arrest in Ottawa.

As of December 2020, there are five Canadian BLM chapters in Toronto, Vancouver, Waterloo Region, Edmonton, and New Brunswick.

In Denmark, an organization named Black Lives Matter Denmark was founded in 2016 by Bwalya Sørensen, a woman from Zambia who came to Denmark when she was 19 years old. The organization is centered around Sørensen and mainly focuses on rejected asylum seekers and criminal foreigners, sentenced to expulsion from Denmark. The connection to the U.S. organization is unclear, but Sørensen has said she was encouraged by someone in the U.S. to start a Danish chapter, and that she, in 2017, was visited by the U.S. co-founder, Opal Tometi.

In June 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter Denmark held a demonstration in Copenhagen that attracted 15,000 participants. Following the demonstration, the organization and Sørensen, in particular, received much criticism because rules separated people by ethnicity: at the demonstration, only black people could be in front, and white people were disallowed to participate in some chants. Other controversies included Sørensen refusing to co-host a demonstration with Amnesty International because their employees were white, and illegally raising money, while calling the missing fundraising permit peaceful " civil disobedience". Sørensen herself has been criticized for splitting the movement with her confrontational style.

A new organization, named Afro Danish Collective, was announced in June 2020, with Roger Matthisen, former member of the Folketing for The Alternative, as spokesperson. The organization has similar goals as Black Lives Matter Denmark, but will take a more moderate approach, including not distinguishing between people at demonstrations based on their skin color. Matthisen said Afro Danish Collective was in part established because the leadership of Black Lives Matter Denmark had not been professional enough.

On July 18, 2020, thousands of protesters marched near Paris to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the death of Adama Traoré. Traoré, a black man, was arrested in July 2016 and fainted after being pinned to the ground by police officers. He later died at a police station; the circumstances of his death are unclear. Racial tensions continued with unrest in 2023 after the killing of teenager Nahel Merzouk.

On June 6, 2020, tens of thousands of people gathered across Germany to support the Black Lives Matter movement. On July 18, 2020, more than 1,500 protesters participated in an anti-racism march in Berlin to condemn police brutality.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, several demonstrations took place in Japan, including a 1,000-person demonstration in Osaka on June 7, 2020, and a 3,500-person march through the streets of Shibuya and Harajuku areas of Tokyo on June 14, 2020. The movement has been met with some backlash in the country, notably on the internet, where some users criticized tennis player Naomi Osaka after she encouraged people to join a Black Lives Matter march in the city of Osaka.

New Zealand

On June 1, 2020, several BLM solidarity protests in response to the murder of George Floyd were held in several New Zealand cities including Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Tauranga, Palmerston North and Hamilton. The Auckland event, which attracted between 2,000 and 4,000 participants, was organized by several members of New Zealand's African community. Auckland organizer Mahlete Tekeste, African American expatriate Kainee Simone, and sportsperson Israel Adesanya compared racism, mass incarceration, and police violence against African Americans to the over-representation of Māori and Pacific Islanders in New Zealand prisons, the controversial armed police response squad trials, and existing racism against minorities in New Zealand including the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. Hip hop artist and music producer Mazbou Q also called on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to condemn violence against black Americans.

The left-wing Green Party, a member of the Labour-led coalition government, has also expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement, linking the plight of African Americans to the racism, inequality, and higher incarceration rate experienced by the Māori and Pasifika communities. The BLM protests in New Zealand attracted criticism from Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters for violating the country's COVID-19 pandemic social distancing regulations banning mass gatherings of over 100 people.

United Kingdom

Black Lives Matter emerged as a movement in the UK in the summer of 2016. Thousands attended protests against police racism in Manchester on July 11, and a group called Black Lives Matter UK (UKBLM) was set up in the wake of the June 23 Brexit referendum at a meeting addressed by US BLM activist Patrisse Cullors. On August 4, 2016, BLM protesters blocked London City Airport in London, England. Several demonstrators chained themselves together on the airport's runway. Nine people were arrested in connection with the incident. There were also BLM-themed protests in other English cities including Birmingham and Nottingham. The UK-held protests marked the fifth anniversary of the shooting death of Mark Duggan.

In 2016, tabloid newspapers ran several stories seeking to expose and discredit BLM activists, leading the movement to adopt anonymity. On June 25, 2017, BLM supporters protested in Stratford, London over the death of Edson Da Costa, who died in police custody. There were no arrests made at the protest. According to Patrick Vernon, BLM's start in the UK in 2016 was not met with respect. From 2018 onwards, after events like the Grenfell Tower fire and the Windrush scandal, the movement was viewed more favorably by black Britons, in particular senior black Britions. In December 2019, Black Lives Matter UK worked with the coalition Wretched of the Earth to represent the voices of global indigenous peoples and people of color in the climate justice movement.

In 2020, protests were held in support of the Black Lives Matter protests in the US. Following the murder of George Floyd, London protests took place in Trafalgar Square on May 31, Hyde Park on June 3, Parliament Square on June 6, and outside the US Embassy on June 7. Similar protests took place in Manchester, Bristol, and Cardiff. The UK protests not only showed solidarity with U.S. protesters, but also commemorated black people who have died in the UK, with protesters chanting, carrying signs, and sharing social media posts with names of victims including Julian Cole, Belly Mujinga, Nuno Cardoso, and Sarah Reed.

The empty pedestal of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol. Subject to increasing controversy since the 1990s, when his prior reputation as a philanthropist came under scrutiny due to a growing awareness of his slave trading, in June 2020 the statue was toppled, defaced and pushed into Bristol Harbour.

On June 7, protests continued in many towns and cities. During a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol, the city center statue of Edward Colston, a late 17th early 18th-century philanthropist, politician and slave trader, was pulled down by protesters, rolled along the road and pushed into Bristol Harbour. The act was later condemned by Home Secretary Priti Patel who said "This hooliganism is utterly indefensible." In London, after it was defaced a few days earlier, protesters defaced the statue of Winston Churchill, Parliament Square, Westminster with graffiti for a second time. Black spray paint was sprayed over his name and the words " was a racist" were sprayed underneath. A protester also attempted to burn the Union Jack flag flying at the Cenotaph, a memorial to Britain's war dead. Later in the evening violence broke out between protesters and police. A total of 49 police officers were injured after demonstrators threw bottles and fireworks at them. Over the weekend, a total of 135 arrests were made by police. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson commented on the events, saying "those who attack public property or the police - who injure the police officers who are trying to keep us all safe - those people will face the full force of the law; not just because of the hurt and damage they are causing, but because of the damage they are doing to the cause they claim to represent."

Peaceful protests took place in Leeds' Millennium Square on June 14, 2020 organized by a coalition of organizations: Black Voices Matter', which included Black Lives Matter Leeds. A second protest was held on Woodhouse Moor on June 21, organized by Black Lives Matter Leeds.

On June 28, Black Lives Matter UK faced criticism for making a series of tweets from their verified Twitter account regarding Israel, including one that claims "mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism". The Premier League, who were carrying the Black Lives Matter logo on their football shirts for the rest of the 2019-20 season, subsequently said that attempts by groups to hijack the cause to suit their own political ends are entirely unwelcome. After receiving considerable donations in summer 2020, Black Lives Matter UK formalised its organisation. In September 2020, the group changed its official name to Black Liberation Movement UK and became legally registered as a community benefit society. However, the group still uses the Black Lives Matter name in its global cooperative efforts. In January 2021, the Black Liberation Movement began to distribute its funds to grassroots black-led and anti-racist organisations across the UK. Activists from a different BLM group, Charles Gordon and Sasha Johnson, founded the Taking The Initiative Party (TTIP) in the summer of 2020 had applied to register as a political party through the Electoral Commission; however, BLM UK said "BLM UK has no intention to set up a political party. This person or group is not affiliated with us."

In September 2021, British businessman and philanthropist Ken Olisa revealed to Channel 4 that Elizabeth II and the British royal family are supporters of Black Lives Matter. In response, a spokesperson for Black Lives Matter UK said "We were surprised to learn the Queen is a BLM supporter. But we welcome anyone that agrees with our goal of dismantling white supremacy. Of course, actions speak louder than words. The Queen sits on a throne made from colonial plunder. Until she gives back all the stolen gold and diamonds from the Commonwealth and pays reparations, these are nothing more than warm words."

In October 2021, The Guardian and The Times reported that a covert police unit in South Wales attempted to recruit a Black Lives Matter protester to be an informant and supply further information about far-right activists who had marched in support of Black Lives Matter. In February 2022, the Swansea chapter of BLM announced it would be closing due to "attempted recruitment by the police and threats to its members' physical and mental safety from far-right activists".

2016 United States presidential election

At the Netroots Nation Conference in July 2015, dozens of Black Lives Matter activists took over the stage at an event featuring Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders. Activists, including Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, asked both candidates for specific policy proposals to address deaths in police custody. The protesters chanted several slogans, including "if I die in police custody, burn everything down" and "Shut this crap down". The expression "Shut it down" would go on to become a popular phrase in Black Lives Matter protests and on social media.

After conference organizers pleaded with the protesters for several minutes, O'Malley responded by pledging to release a wide-ranging plan for criminal justice reform. Protesters later booed O'Malley when he stated "Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter." O'Malley later apologized for his remarks, saying that he did not mean to disrespect the black community.

On August 8, 2015, a speech by Democratic presidential candidate and civil rights activist Bernie Sanders was disrupted by a group who would go on to found the Seattle Chapter of Black Lives Matter including chapter co-founder Marissa Johnson who walked onstage, seized the microphone from him and called his supporters racists and white supremacists. Sanders issued a platform in response. Nikki Stephens, the operator of a Facebook page called "Black Lives Matter: Seattle" issued an apology to Sanders' supporters, claiming these actions did not represent her understanding of BLM. She was then sent messages by members of the Seattle Chapter which she described as threatening and was forced to change the name of her group to "Black in Seattle". The founders of Black Lives Matter stated that they had not issued an apology. In August 2015, the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution supporting Black Lives Matter.

In the first Democratic primary debate, the presidential candidates were asked whether black lives matter or all lives matter. In reply, Bernie Sanders stated, "Black lives matter." Martin O'Malley said, "Black lives matter," and that the "movement is making is a very, very legitimate and serious point, and that is that as a nation we have undervalued the lives of black lives, people of color." In response, Hillary Clinton pushed for criminal justice reform, and said, "We need a new New Deal for communities of color." Jim Webb, on the other hand, replied: "As the president of the United States, every life in this country matters." Hillary Clinton was not directly asked the same question, but was instead asked: "What would you do for African Americans in this country that President Obama couldn't?" Clinton had already met with Black Lives Matter representatives, and emphasized what she described as a more pragmatic approach to enacting change, stating "Look, I don't believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws". Without policy change, she felt "we'll be back here in 10 years having the same conversation." In June 2015, Clinton used the phrase "all lives matter" in a speech about the opportunities of young people of color, prompting backlash that she may misunderstand the message of "Black Lives Matter."

A week after the first Democratic primary debate was held in Las Vegas, BLM launched a petition targeted at the DNC and its chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz demanding more debates, and "specifically for a #BlackLivesMatter themed Presidential debate." The petition received over 10,000 signatures within 24 hours of being launched, and had over 33,000 signatures as of October 27, 2015. The DNC said that it would permit presidential candidates to attend a presidential town hall organized by activists, but that it would not add another debate to its official schedule. In response, the organization released a press statement on its Facebook page stating that "[i]n consultation with our chapters, our communities, allies, and supporters, we remain unequivocal that a Presidential Town Hall with support from the DNC does not sufficiently respond to the concerns raised by our members", continuing to demand a full additional debate.

Republicans

Republican candidates have been mostly critical of BLM. In August 2015, Ben Carson, the only African American vying for the Republican nomination for the presidency, called the movement "silly". Carson also said that BLM should care for all black lives, not just a few. In the first Republican presidential debate, which took place in Cleveland, one question referenced Black Lives Matter. In response to the question, Scott Walker advocated for the proper training of law enforcement and blamed the movement for rising anti-police sentiment, while Marco Rubio was the first candidate to publicly sympathize with the movement's point of view.

Several conservative pundits have labeled the movement a "hate group". Candidate Chris Christie, the New Jersey Governor, criticized President Obama for supporting BLM, stating that the movement calls for the murder of police officers. Christie's statement was condemned by New Jersey chapters of the NAACP and ACLU.

Anti-Trump protest in New York City, March 19, 2016

In March 2016, Black Lives Matter helped organize the 2016 Donald Trump Chicago rally protest that forced Trump to cancel the event. Four individuals were arrested and charged in the incident; two were "charged with felony aggravated battery to a police officer and resisting arrest", one was "charged with two misdemeanor counts of resisting and obstructing a peace officer", and the fourth "was charged with one misdemeanor count of resisting and obstructing a peace officer". A CBS reporter was one of those arrested outside the rally. He was charged with resisting arrest.

General election

A group called Mothers of the Movement, which includes the mothers of Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, and other mothers whose "unarmed African American children have been killed by law enforcement or due to gun violence," addressed the 2016 Democratic National Convention on July 26.

In a Washington Post op-ed, DeRay Mckesson endorsed Hillary Clinton, because her "platform on racial justice is strong". He articulated that voting alone is not the only way to bring about "transformational change". He said that "I voted my entire life, and I was still tear-gassed in the streets of St. Louis and Baltimore. I voted my entire life, and those votes did not convict the killers of Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray or Michael Brown".

Reactions and legacy

The United States population's perception of Black Lives Matter has varied consistently and considerably by race and political affiliation. A majority of Americans disapproved of the movement through 2018, after which it started gaining wider support. Black Lives Matter's popularity surged and reached its highest levels yet in the summer of 2020, when a Pew Research Center poll found that 60% of white, 77% of Hispanic, 75% of Asian and 86% of African-Americans either strongly supported or somewhat supported BLM. However, its popularity had declined considerably in September of the same year, when another Pew Research Center poll showed that its overall approval ratings among all American adults had gone down by 12 percentage points to 55%, and that 45% of whites, 66% of Hispanics and 69% of Asians now approved of it. Support remained widespread among black-American adults at 87%.

A Politico- Morning Consult poll done in September 2020 as well as a Civiqs poll conducted in November 2021 had also found declining support for the movement. A 2022 YouGov poll found declining support for BLM among African-Americans. An April 2023 Pew Research Center poll found that only 51% of Americans supported the BLM movement, while 46% opposed the movement. In the same poll, 81% of African Americans said they still supported the movement.

The phrase " All Lives Matter" sprang up as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement, but has been criticized for dismissing or misunderstanding the message of "Black Lives Matter". Following the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, the hashtag Blue Lives Matter was created by supporters of the police. A few civil rights leaders have disagreed with tactics used by Black Lives Matter activists. Public and academic debate at large has arisen over the structure and tactics used.

"All Lives Matter"

The phrase " All Lives Matter" sprang up as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement, shortly after the movement gained national attention. Several notable individuals have supported All Lives Matter. Its proponents include Senator Tim Scott. NFL cornerback Richard Sherman supports the All Lives Matter message, saying "I stand by what I said that All Lives Matter and that we are human beings." According to an August 2015 telephone poll, 78% of likely American voters said that the statement "all lives matter" was closest to their own personal views when compared to "black lives matter" or neither. Only 11% said that the statement "black lives matter" was closest. Nine percent said that neither statement reflected their own personal point of view.

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"All Houses Matter", Chainsawsuit, Kris Straub, July 7, 2016. Cartoonist uses a house fire to illustrate why critics see "All Lives Matter" as problematic.[398]

"Blue Lives Matter"

Blue Lives Matter is a countermovement in the United States supporting law enforcement officers and advocating that those who are prosecuted and convicted of killing law enforcement officers should be sentenced under hate crime statutes. It was started in response to Black Lives Matter after the homicides of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in Brooklyn, New York on December 20, 2014. Following the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson and in response to BLM, the hashtag#BlueLivesMatter was created by supporters of the police. Following this, Blue Lives Matter became a pro-police officer movement in the United States, expanding after the killings of five police officers by a sniper in Dallas, Texas, who cited police shootings of Black people as his motive.

Criticized by the ACLU and others, the movement inspired a state law in Louisiana that made it a hate crime to target police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical service personnel.

The movement has been strongly criticized after the 2021 United States Capitol attack after pro-Trump rioters were seen showing support for the movement, with some bringing Blue Lives Matter flags to the protest. Many have called the movement hypocritical, as people in the mob assaulted Capitol police officers. One African American Capitol police officer, Harry Dunn, described being beaten with a Blue Lives Matter flag while rioters shouted racial slurs at him. This has led some to argue that Blue Lives Matter is more about suppressing minorities than supporting law enforcement.

"White Lives Matter"

White Lives Matter is an activist group created in response to Black Lives Matter. In August 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center added "White Lives Matter" to its list of hate groups. The group has also been active in the United Kingdom. The "White Lives Matter" slogan was chanted by torch-wielding alt-right protesters during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. On October 28, 2017, numerous "White Lives Matter" rallies broke out in Tennessee. Dominated in Shelbyville particularly, protesters justified their movement in response to the increasing number of immigrants and refugees to Middle Tennessee. "White Lives Matter" movements have also been present in European football, with instances of corresponding banners being raised at stadiums in the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Hungary, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. White Lives Matter has also been promoted by white nationalists.

Disinformation

The Anti-Defamation League reports numerous attempts to spread disinformation about BLM, citing as examples mid-June 2020 posts "featuring a sticker instructing people to 'kill a white on sight' spread on Facebook and Twitter. The sticker included the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #Antifa." On Telegram, a "white supremacist channel encouraged members to distribute the propaganda." Another disinformation campaign, originating in June 2020 on 4chan, had the "goal of getting the hashtags #AllWhitesAreNazis (#AWAN) trending on Twitter. Organizers hoped to commandeer hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter and #BLM with a high volume of tweets-purportedly from Black activist accounts-containing the #AWAN hashtag." According to the ADL, the campaign's supporters hoped to sow tension and promote white supremacist accelerationism.

Conservative pundits such as Ryan Fournier and Candace Owens have falsely claimed that ActBlue funnels donations intended for Black Lives Matter to Democratic candidates, with some going so far as to allege the organization is a money laundering scam.

Fake manifesto

Statistics

The United States population's perception of Black Lives Matter varies considerably by race. According to a September 2015 poll on race relations, nearly two-thirds of African Americans mostly agree with Black Lives Matter, while 30% of black Americans and 37% of white Americans do not have an opinion about Black Lives Matter. Of white people surveyed, 41% thought that Black Lives Matter advocated violence, and 59% of whites thought that Black Lives Matter distracted attention from the real issues of racial discrimination. By comparison, 82% of black people polled thought that Black Lives Matter was a nonviolent movement, and 26% of blacks thought that Black Lives Matter distracted attention from the real issues of racial discrimination. On the question of whether "Black Lives Matter" was mostly a movement or mostly a slogan, 46% of whites and 67% of blacks thought that it is mostly a movement. A nationally representative internet survey conducted by the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University found that 82 percent of African Americans believe that the movement is at least moderately effective at achieving its stated goals, although 64 percent of the respondents believed that the movement would be more effective if it had a more centralized leadership structure.

A poll in June 2016 found that 65% of black American adults supported Black Lives Matter and 40% of white American adults support it. Fifty-nine percent of black Americans thought that Black Lives Matter would "be effective, in the long run, in helping blacks achieve equality" and 34% of white Americans thought so. A 2017 Harvard-Harris survey found that 35% of whites and 83% of blacks have a favorable view of the movement.

According to an analysis by The Guardian of statistics collected by the US Crisis Monitor, during most of 2020 "US law enforcement agencies have used teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and beatings at a much higher percentage at Black Lives Matter demonstrations than at pro-Trump or other rightwing protests", regardless of whether the protest was violent or peaceful. The analysis also notes that "the vast majority of the thousands of protests across the United States in the past year have been peaceful, and [...] most protests by both the left and the right were not met with any violent response by law enforcement."

With the resurgence of Black Lives Matter in national headlines amid global protests, the movement saw an increase in support in 2020. Although they began from different perspectives, as per the New York Times' The Upshot, "all kinds of voters moved sharply in the direction of supporting the movement" just within the two weeks between late May and early June "as much as [they] had in the preceding two years." The Pew Research Center reported that "[m]ost Americans express[ed] support for the Black Lives Matter movement" during this period.

According to Terrance Woodbury, a researcher of attitudes among young adults, "[the] movement has evolved from Black people vs. the police to young people vs. racism." An online survey of people aged from 18 to 34 by the Global Strategy Group found broad support from the participants, except by those who identified as pro- Trump Republicans.

However, the movement's momentum and popularity began to decline, with a Pew Research Center poll showing that support for Black Lives Matter had fallen by 12 percentage points to 55% of all American adults by September, and had returned to a net negative approval rating among white Americans as well as significantly declining in popularity among Hispanic Americans. Support remained widespread among black American adults (up 1% from June to 87%).

Nobel Peace Prize nomination

Criticisms

Some conservatives, such as Mike Gonzalez of The Heritage Foundation, have accused Black Lives Matter of being a Marxist movement based on a comment by one of its co-founders saying that she and another co-founder "are trained Marxists." However, PolitiFact noted that "Black Lives Matter has grown into a national anti-racism movement broadly supported by Americans, few of whom would identify themselves as Marxist."

Some black civil rights leaders such as Cecil "Chip" Murray, Najee Ali, and Earl Ofari Hutchinson have criticized BLM as disrespectful and ineffective, with Ali claiming "all they can do is disrupt and make noise." Economist Glenn Loury, while supportive of the fundamentals of the movement, has criticized backlash against "White politicians who state All Lives Matter" and the apparent polarizing effects of the movement.

In his 2018 book The Once and Future Liberal, Mark Lilla criticizes Black Lives Matter as part of his broader left-wing critique of identity politics. Though he agreed with their aims, he called their rhetoric "a textbook example in how to not build solidarity", arguing that the campaign alienates people with their negative attitude toward American society and law enforcement and with their overbearing tactics. He also compared them unfavorably to the civil rights movement leaders, who were "consciously appealing to what we share" instead of emphasizing differences of race and other identities. Lilla has in turn been criticized for "trolling disguised as erudition" and of "making white supremacy respectable, again".

Academic freedom

Some academics, including John McWhorter, John Ellis, Marybeth Gasman, and Glenn Loury have criticized some Black Lives Matter activists as silencing speech and repressing academic freedom. They claim that the result is self-censorship, reduced academic inquiry, and research bias. Critics claim academics have been hesitant to speak out against repression for fear of retribution.

In particular, high-profile academics have spoken out against the use of "diversity statements" in admission, hiring, and tenure decisions, including Jeffrey Flier, Dean of the Harvard Medical School, and Abigail Thompson, Vice President of the American Mathematical Society. Thompson drew comparisons to McCarthy-era loyalty oaths. When schools receive state funding, scholars have criticized Black Lives Matter pledges as unconstitutional.

Views on law enforcement

Some critics accuse Black Lives Matter of being anti-police and endorsing violence against the police. Sgt. Demetrick Pennie of the Dallas Police Department filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against Black Lives Matter in September 2016, which accused the group of inciting a " race war." Marchers using a BLM banner were recorded in a video chanting, "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon" at the Minnesota State Fair. Law enforcement groups claim the chant promotes death to police. The protest organizer disputed that interpretation, saying: "What we are promoting is that if black people who kill police officers are going to fry, then we want police officers to face the same treatment that we face as civilians for killing officers."

Disconnect from underprivileged communities

Some black community leaders have come out against the movement as disconnected from the people it claims to represent. In opposing August 2020 budget cuts, New York City Councilman I. Daneek Miller, co-chairman of the council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus opposed reducing police funding and stated, "Black folks want to be safe like everyone else...we can't allow folks from outside our community to lecture us about Black lives." Vanessa Gibson of the Bronx's 16th Council District stated that, "My working-class people, my homeowners, my tenants, my neighbors-they are not out there screaming and yelling, because they have to work." Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, called "defund the police" a "bourgeois liberal" solution to racism.

Insufficient focus on women

Mismanagement of funds

Lack of focus on unsolved murders and missing persons cases

According to FBI statistics, 40% of missing persons across the US are people of color. Kyle Pope, an editor and researcher of the Columbia Journalism Review, noticed a lack of media attention when it comes to these crimes. In 2008, Derrica and Natalie Wilson launched the Black and Missing Foundation, a non-profit to find unsolved Black murder victims across the country. In a 2021 interview, they found that unsolved murders of Black people have been disproportionately overlooked by both law enforcement and national media outlets.

References

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Black Lives Matter ( BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people and to promote anti-racism. Its primary concerns are police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people.

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Racial Equality

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Who Was Nelson Mandela?

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a social rights activist, politician and philanthropist who became South Africa's first black president from 1994 to 1999. After becoming involved in the anti- apartheid movement in his 20s, Mandela joined the African National Congress in 1942. For 20 years, he directed a campaign of peaceful, nonviolent defiance against the South African government and its racist policies.

Beginning in 1962, Mandela spent 27 years in prison for political offenses. In 1993, Mandela and South African President F.W. de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to dismantle the country's apartheid system. For generations to come, Mandela will be a source of inspiration for civil rights activists worldwide.

Early Life

Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in the tiny village of Mvezo, on the banks of the Mbashe River in Transkei, South Africa.

His birth name was Rolihlahla Mandela. "Rolihlahla" in the Xhosa language literally means "pulling the branch of a tree," but more commonly translates as "troublemaker."

Mandela's father, who was destined to be a chief, served as a counselor to tribal chiefs for several years, but lost both his title and fortune over a dispute with the local colonial magistrate.

Mandela was only an infant at the time, and his father's loss of status forced his mother to move the family to Qunu, an even smaller village north of Mvezo. The village was nestled in a narrow grassy valley; there were no roads, only footpaths that linked the pastures where livestock grazed.

The family lived in huts and ate a local harvest of maize, sorghum, pumpkin and beans, which was all they could afford. Water came from springs and streams and cooking was done outdoors.

Mandela played the games of young boys, acting out male right-of-passage scenarios with toys he made from the natural materials available, including tree branches and clay.

Education

At the suggestion of one of his father's friends, Mandela was baptized in the Methodist Church. He went on to become the first in his family to attend school. As was custom at the time, and probably due to the bias of the British educational system in South Africa, Mandela's teacher told him that his new first name would be Nelson.

When Mandela was nine years old, his father died of lung disease, causing his life to change dramatically. He was adopted by Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, the acting regent of the Thembu people - a gesture done as a favor to Mandela's father, who, years earlier, had recommended Jongintaba be made chief.

Mandela subsequently left the carefree life he knew in Qunu, fearing that he would never see his village again. He traveled by motorcar to Mqhekezweni, the provincial capital of Thembuland, to the chief's royal residence. Though he had not forgotten his beloved village of Qunu, he quickly adapted to the new, more sophisticated surroundings of Mqhekezweni.

Mandela was given the same status and responsibilities as the regent's two other children, his son and oldest child, Justice, and daughter Nomafu. Mandela took classes in a one-room school next to the palace, studying English, Xhosa, history and geography.

It was during this period that Mandela developed an interest in African history, from elder chiefs who came to the Great Palace on official business. He learned how the African people had lived in relative peace until the coming of the white people.

According to the elders, the children of South Africa had previously lived as brothers, but white men had shattered this fellowship. While black men shared their land, air and water with whites, white men took all of these things for themselves.

Political Awakening

When Mandela was 16, it was time for him to partake in the traditional African circumcision ritual to mark his entrance into manhood. The ceremony of circumcision was not just a surgical procedure, but an elaborate ritual in preparation for manhood.

In African tradition, an uncircumcised man cannot inherit his father's wealth, marry or officiate at tribal rituals. Mandela participated in the ceremony with 25 other boys. He welcomed the opportunity to partake in his people's customs and felt ready to make the transition from boyhood to manhood.

His mood shifted during the proceedings, however, when Chief Meligqili, the main speaker at the ceremony, spoke sadly of the young men, explaining that they were enslaved in their own country. Because their land was controlled by white men, they would never have the power to govern themselves, the chief said.

He went on to lament that the promise of the young men would be squandered as they struggled to make a living and perform mindless chores for white men. Mandela would later say that while the chief's words didn't make total sense to him at the time, they would eventually formulate his resolve for an independent South Africa.

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University Life

Under the guardianship of Regent Jongintaba, Mandela was groomed to assume high office, not as a chief, but a counselor to one. As Thembu royalty, Mandela attended a Wesleyan mission school, the Clarkebury Boarding Institute and Wesleyan College, where, he would later state, he achieved academic success through "plain hard work."

He also excelled at track and boxing. Mandela was initially mocked as a "country boy" by his Wesleyan classmates, but eventually became friends with several students, including Mathona, his first female friend.

In 1939, Mandela enrolled at the University of Fort Hare, the only residential center of higher learning for blacks in South Africa at the time. Fort Hare was considered Africa's equivalent of Harvard, drawing scholars from all parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

In his first year at the university, Mandela took the required courses, but focused on Roman Dutch law to prepare for a career in civil service as an interpreter or clerk - regarded as the best profession that a black man could obtain at the time.

In his second year at Fort Hare, Mandela was elected to the Student Representative Council. For some time, students had been dissatisfied with the food and lack of power held by the SRC. During this election, a majority of students voted to boycott unless their demands were met.

Aligning with the student majority, Mandela resigned from his position. Seeing this as an act of insubordination, the university expelled Mandela for the rest of the year and gave him an ultimatum: He could return to the school if he agreed to serve on the SRC. When Mandela returned home, the regent was furious, telling him unequivocally that he would have to recant his decision and go back to school in the fall.

A few weeks after Mandela returned home, Regent Jongintaba announced that he had arranged a marriage for his adopted son. The regent wanted to make sure that Mandela's life was properly planned, and the arrangement was within his right, as tribal custom dictated.

Shocked by the news, feeling trapped and believing that he had no other option than to follow this recent order, Mandela ran away from home. He settled in Johannesburg, where he worked a variety of jobs, including as a guard and a clerk, while completing his bachelor's degree via correspondence courses. He then enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg to study law.

Anti-Apartheid Movement

Mandela soon became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress in 1942. Within the ANC, a small group of young Africans banded together, calling themselves the African National Congress Youth League. Their goal was to transform the ANC into a mass grassroots movement, deriving strength from millions of rural peasants and working people who had no voice under the current regime.

Specifically, the group believed that the ANC's old tactics of polite petitioning were ineffective. In 1949, the ANC officially adopted the Youth League's methods of boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-cooperation, with policy goals of full citizenship, redistribution of land, trade union rights, and free and compulsory education for all children.

For 20 years, Mandela directed peaceful, nonviolent acts of defiance against the South African government and its racist policies, including the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He founded the law firm Mandela and Tambo, partnering with Oliver Tambo, a brilliant student he'd met while attending Fort Hare. The law firm provided free and low-cost legal counsel to unrepresented blacks.

In 1956, Mandela and 150 others were arrested and charged with treason for their political advocacy (they were eventually acquitted). Meanwhile, the ANC was being challenged by Africanists, a new breed of black activists who believed that the pacifist method of the ANC was ineffective.

Africanists soon broke away to form the Pan-Africanist Congress, which negatively affected the ANC; by 1959, the movement had lost much of its militant support.

Wife and Children

Mandela was married three times and had six children. He wed his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase, in 1944. The couple had four children together: Madiba Thembekile (d. 1964), Makgatho (d. 2005), Makaziwe (d. 1948 at nine months old) and Maki. The couple divorced in 1957.

In 1958, Mandela wed Winnie Madikizela; the couple had two daughters together, Zenani (Argentina's South African ambassador) and Zindziswa (the South African ambassador to Denmark), before separating in 1996.

Two years later, in 1998, Mandela married Graca Machel, the first Education Minister of Mozambique, with whom he remained until his death in 2013.

Prison Years

Formerly committed to nonviolent protest, Mandela began to believe that armed struggle was the only way to achieve change. In 1961, Mandela co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, also known as MK, an armed offshoot of the ANC dedicated to sabotage and use guerilla war tactics to end apartheid.

In 1961, Mandela orchestrated a three-day national workers' strike. He was arrested for leading the strike the following year and was sentenced to five years in prison. In 1963, Mandela was brought to trial again. This time, he and 10 other ANC leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment for political offenses, including sabotage.

Mandela spent 27 years in prison, from November 1962 until February 1990. He was incarcerated on Robben Island for 18 of his 27 years in prison. During this time, he contracted tuberculosis and, as a black political prisoner, received the lowest level of treatment from prison workers. However, while incarcerated, Mandela was able to earn a Bachelor of Law degree through a University of London correspondence program.

A 1981 memoir by South African intelligence agent Gordon Winter described a plot by the South African government to arrange for Mandela's escape so as to shoot him during the recapture; the plot was foiled by British intelligence.

Mandela continued to be such a potent symbol of black resistance that a coordinated international campaign for his release was launched, and this international groundswell of support exemplified the power and esteem that Mandela had in the global political community.

In 1982, Mandela and other ANC leaders were moved to Pollsmoor Prison, allegedly to enable contact between them and the South African government. In 1985, President P.W. Botha offered Mandela's release in exchange for renouncing armed struggle; the prisoner flatly rejected the offer.

F. W. de Klerk

With increasing local and international pressure for his release, the government participated in several talks with Mandela over the ensuing years, but no deal was made.

It wasn't until Botha suffered a stroke and was replaced by Frederik Willem de Klerk that Mandela's release was finally announced, on February 11, 1990. De Klerk also lifted the ban on the ANC, removed restrictions on political groups and suspended executions.

Upon his release from prison, Mandela immediately urged foreign powers not to reduce their pressure on the South African government for constitutional reform. While he stated that he was committed to working toward peace, he declared that the ANC's armed struggle would continue until the black majority received the right to vote.

In 1991, Mandela was elected president of the African National Congress, with lifelong friend and colleague Oliver Tambo serving as national chairperson.

Nobel Peace Prize

In 1993, Mandela and President de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work toward dismantling apartheid in South Africa.

After Mandela's release from prison, he negotiated with President de Klerk toward the country's first multiracial elections. White South Africans were willing to share power, but many black South Africans wanted a complete transfer of power.

The negotiations were often strained, and news of violent eruptions, including the assassination of ANC leader Chris Hani, continued throughout the country. Mandela had to keep a delicate balance of political pressure and intense negotiations amid the demonstrations and armed resistance.

Presidency

Due in no small part to the work of Mandela and President de Klerk, negotiations between black and white South Africans prevailed: On April 27, 1994, South Africa held its first democratic elections. Mandela was inaugurated as the country's first black president on May 10, 1994, at the age of 77, with de Klerk as his first deputy.

From 1994 until June 1999, President Mandela worked to bring about the transition from minority rule and apartheid to black majority rule. He used the nation's enthusiasm for sports as a pivot point to promote reconciliation between whites and blacks, encouraging black South Africans to support the once-hated national rugby team.

In 1995, South Africa came to the world stage by hosting the Rugby World Cup, which brought further recognition and prestige to the young republic. That year Mandela was also awarded the Order of Merit.

During his presidency Mandela also worked to protect South Africa's economy from collapse. Through his Reconstruction and Development Plan, the South African government funded the creation of jobs, housing and basic health care.

In 1996, Mandela signed into law a new constitution for the nation, establishing a strong central government based on majority rule, and guaranteeing both the rights of minorities and the freedom of expression.

Retirement and Later Career

By the 1999 general election, Mandela had retired from active politics. He continued to maintain a busy schedule, however, raising money to build schools and clinics in South Africa's rural heartland through his foundation, and serving as a mediator in Burundi's civil war.

Mandela was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer in 2001. In June 2004, at the age of 85, he announced his formal retirement from public life and returned to his native village of Qunu.

The Elders

On July 18, 2007, Mandela and wife Graca Machel co-founded The Elders, a group of world leaders aiming to work both publicly and privately to find solutions to some of the world's toughest issues. The group included Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Mary Robinson and Muhammad Yunus.

The Elders' impact has spanned Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and their actions have included promoting peace and women's equality, demanding an end to atrocities, and supporting initiatives to address humanitarian crises and promote democracy.

In addition to advocating for peace and equality on both a national and global scale, in his later years, Mandela remained committed to the fight against AIDS. His son Makgatho died of the disease in 2005.

Barack Obama & Nelson Mandela

Mandela made his last public appearance at the final match of the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. He remained largely out of the spotlight in his later years, choosing to spend much of his time in his childhood community of Qunu, south of Johannesburg.

He did, however, visit with U.S. first lady Michelle Obama, wife of President Barack Obama, during her trip to South Africa in 2011. Barack Obama, while a junior senator from Illinois, also met with Mandela during his 2005 trip to the United States.

When Did Nelson Mandela Die?

Mandela died on December 5, 2013, at the age of 95 in his home in Johannesburg, South Africa. After suffering a lung infection in January 2011, Mandela was briefly hospitalized in Johannesburg to undergo surgery for a stomach ailment in early 2012.

He was released after a few days, later returning to Qunu. Mandela would be hospitalized many times over the next several years - in December 2012, March 2013 and June 2013 - for further testing and medical treatment relating to his recurrent lung infection.

Following his June 2013 hospital visit, Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, canceled a scheduled appearance in London to remain at her husband's his side, and his daughter, Zenani Dlamini, flew back from Argentina to South Africa to be with her father.

Jacob Zuma, South Africa's president, issued a statement in response to public concern over Mandela's March 2013 health scare, asking for support in the form of prayer: "We appeal to the people of South Africa and the world to pray for our beloved Madiba and his family and to keep them in their thoughts," Zuma said.

On the day of Mandela's death, Zuma released a statement speaking to Mandela's legacy: "Wherever we are in the country, wherever we are in the world, let us reaffirm his vision of a society ... in which none is exploited, oppressed or dispossessed by another," he said.

Movie and Books

In 1994, Mandela published his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, much of which he had secretly written while in prison. The book inspired the 2013 movie Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.

He also published a number of books on his life and struggles, among them No Easy Walk to Freedom; Nelson Mandela: The Struggle Is My Life; and Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales.

Mandela Day

In 2009, Mandela's birthday (July 18th) was declared Mandela Day, an international day to promote global peace and celebrate the South African leader's legacy. According to the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the annual event is meant to encourage citizens worldwide to give back the way that Mandela has throughout his lifetime.

A statement on the Nelson Mandela Foundation's website reads: "Mr. Mandela gave 67 years of his life fighting for the rights of humanity. All we are asking is that everyone gives

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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a social rights activist, politician and philanthropist who became South Africa's first black president from 1994 to 1999. After becoming involved in the anti- apartheid movement in his 20s, Mandela joined the African National Congress in 1942.

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Protection of Water

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The Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, also known by the hashtag # NoDAPL, were a series of grassroots Native American protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the northern United States that began in April 2016. Protests ended on February 23, 2017 when National Guard and law enforcement officers evicted the last remaining protesters.

The pipeline runs from the Bakken oil fields in western North Dakota to southern Illinois, crossing beneath the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, as well as under part of Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Many members of the Standing Rock tribe and surrounding communities consider the pipeline to be a serious threat to the region's water. The construction also directly threatens ancient burial grounds and cultural sites of historic importance.

In April 2016, youth from Standing Rock and surrounding Native American communities organized a campaign to stop the pipeline, calling themselves "ReZpect Our Water". Inspired by the youth, several adults, including Joye Braun of the Indigenous Environmental Network and tribal historian LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, established a water protectors' camp as a center for direct action, demonstrating spiritual resistance to the pipeline in both a defence of Indigenous sovereignty and cultural preservation. The #NoDAPL hashtag began to trend on social media, and the camps at Standing Rock gradually grew to thousands of people.

Conflict between water protectors and law enforcement escalated through the summer and fall. In September 2016, construction workers bulldozed a section of privately owned land which the tribe had claimed as sacred ground. When protesters trespassed into the area, security workers used attack dogs which bit at least six of the demonstrators and one horse. In October 2016, militarized police cleared an encampment which was situated on the proposed path of the pipeline. In November 2016, police used water cannons on protesters in freezing weather, consequently drawing significant media attention.

Pipeline protests were reported as early as October 2014, when Iowa community and environmental activists presented 2,300 petitions to Iowa Governor Terry Branstad asking him to sign a state executive order to stop it. Voicing concerns for damage to wildlife habitat and sacred sites, the Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa ( Meskwaki Nation) also objected to the route and formally lodged their opposition in early 2015. Tribal members were also among those who opposed the Keystone XL pipeline. In a letter to the Iowa Utilities Board, Tribal chairwoman Judith Bender wrote that there were "environmental concerns about the land and drinking water...it will only take one mistake and life in Iowa will change for the next thousands of years."

The tribe sued for an injunction on the grounds that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had failed to conduct a proper environmental and cultural impact study. Protests had escalated at the pipeline site in North Dakota, with numbers swelling from just a bare handful of people to hundreds and then thousands over the summer.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe believes that the pipeline would put the Missouri River, the water source for the reservation, at risk. They pointed out two recent spills on other pipeline systems, a 2010 pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, which cost over a billion to clean up with significant contamination remaining, and a 2015 Bakken crude oil spill into the Yellowstone River in Montana. The Tribe was also concerned that the pipeline route may run through sacred Sioux sites. In August 2016 protests were held, halting a portion of the pipeline near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. Protests continued and drew indigenous peoples from throughout North America, as well as other supporters. A number of planned arrests occurred when people locked themselves to heavy machinery.

On August 23, 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe released a list of 87 tribal governments who wrote resolutions, proclamations and letters of support stating their solidarity with Standing Rock and the Sioux people. Since then, many more Native American organizations, politicians, environmental groups and civil rights groups joined the effort in North Dakota, including the Black Lives Matter movement, indigenous leaders from the Amazon Basin of South America, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka, and many more. The Washington Post called it a "National movement for Native Americans." As of September, the protest constituted the single largest gathering of Native Americans in more than 100 years.

On April 25, 2017, descendant of Sitting Bull, Standing Rock Lakota Reserve member and Indigenous Environmental Network delegate, Brenda White Bull, spoke at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She specifically addressed indigenous resistance against Dakota Access and the state's unwarranted use of violence. She stated that "we are more powerful than their [the state's] militarized police forces and guns, because we are armed with prayer." She further indirectly addressed a widely acknowledged indigenous principle that 'Water is Life', cautioning against the contamination of water sources in Standing Rock, speaking as a guardian on their behalf. Facing violent violations of the rights of the Standing Rock community and its water sources, she demanded that the United States implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, warning that if they fail to do so, Standing Rock will do it themselves.

Security confrontations & violence

When protesters crossed the perimeter fence onto private property to stop the bulldozers, they were confronted with pepper spray and guard dogs. At least six protesters were treated for dog bites, and an estimated 30 were pepper-sprayed before the guards and their dogs left the scene in trucks. A woman that had taken part in the incident stated, "The cops watched the whole thing from up on the hills. It felt like they were trying to provoke us into being violent when we're peaceful." The incident was filmed by Amy Goodman and a crew from Democracy Now! Footage shows several people with dog bites and a dog with blood on its muzzle.

Frost Kennels of Hartville, Ohio, acknowledged that they were involved in the incident on September 3. Executive director for Private Investigator Security Guard Services, Geoff Dutton, said Frost Kennels and its owner, Bob Frost, were not licensed by the state of Ohio to provide security services or guard dogs. Morton County Sheriff, Kyle Kirchmeier, said they were investigating both sides in the incident, including wounds inflicted by the dogs, and that they had no prior knowledge of the use of dogs until a 9-1-1 call was made. When asked why the deputies who witnessed the incident did not intervene, Kirchmeier cited officer security concerns, and stated that it was "more like a riot than a protest" and that there was an investigation into "the incident and individuals who organized and participated in this unlawful event."

After viewing footage of the attack, a law enforcement consultant who trains police dogs called it "absolutely appalling" and "reprehensible". "Taking bite dogs and putting them at the end of a leash to intimidate, threaten and prevent crime is not appropriate." A former K-9 officer for the Grand Forks Police Department who now owns a security firm that uses dogs for drug detection said, "It reminded me of the civil rights movement back in the '60s. I didn't think it was appropriate. They were overwhelmed and it just wasn't proper use of the dogs."

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota spoke out against the use of dogs and pepper spray and asked that the state officials "treat everyone fairly and equally." Speaking on September 4, Ojibwe activist and former Green Party vice presidential candidate Winona LaDuke said, "North Dakota regulators are really, I would say, in bed with the oil industry and so they have looked the other way."

Actress Shailene Woodley, arrested on October 10, 2016, along with 27 others, also said she was strip-searched, adding, "Never did it cross my mind that while trying to protect clean water, trying to ensure a future where our children have access to an element essential for human survival, would I be strip-searched. I was just shocked." Amnesty International spoke out against the use of strip searches and said that they had sent a letter to the Morton County Sheriff's Department expressing concern about the degree of force used against people taking part in the protests. They sent a delegation of human rights observers to monitor law enforcement's response to the protests.

Protesters said they were blasted with high-pitched sound cannons and described being held in cages that "appeared to be" dog kennels, in the garage of the Morton County Correctional Center, with identifying numbers written on their arms by the arresting officers. One of the arrestees, Floris White Bull, said - "We were caged in dog kennels and sat on the floor and we were marked with numbers," she said. "My mind, I couldn't wrap it around the fact that this is happening today. This isn't something that we're reading in history books."

In December 2016, it was reported by Charlie May that Dakota Access LLC had hired the firm TigerSwan to provide security during the protest. In May 2017, internal TigerSwan documents leaked to The Intercept and other documents obtained through public records requests revealed a close collaboration between the pipeline company and local, state, and federal law enforcement as they carried out "military-style counterterrorism measures" to suppress the protesters. TigerSwan also collected information used to assist prosecutors in building cases against protesters, and used social media in an attempt to sway public support for the pipeline. One of the released documents called the pipeline opposition movement "an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component" that operated along a "jihadist insurgency model". The Intercept reported that "Energy Transfer Partners has continued to retain TigerSwan long after most of the anti-pipeline campers left North Dakota, and the most recent TigerSwan reports emphasize the threat of growing activism around other pipeline projects across the country."

On October 27, 2016 police from several agencies, including North Dakota state troopers, the National Guard, and other law enforcement agencies from surrounding states, began an intensive operation to clear out a protest camp and blockades along Highway 1806.[citation needed ] The Morton County Sheriff's Department said in a statement: "Protesters' escalated unlawful behavior this weekend by setting up illegal roadblocks, trespassing onto private property and establishing an encampment, has forced law enforcement to respond at this time. I can't stress it enough, this is a public safety issue. We cannot have protesters blocking county roads, blocking state highways, or trespassing on private property."

A Seattle Times journalist present at the confrontation described it as "scary". On the PBS Newshour, she said that she had spent the previous night in the camp "with tribal members who were singing their death songs. I mean, they were very worried about the possibility of violence. And who wouldn't be? You have seen law enforcement marshaled from six states, armored personnel carriers, hundreds and hundreds of law enforcement officers with concussion grenades, mace, Tasers, batons. And they used all of it. I mean, it was frightening to watch." She said that the confrontation ended the following day and said, "the law enforcement officers had advance[d] more than 100 yards with five armored personnel carriers side by side, hundreds of law enforcement officers advancing on them. And it finally took an elder to actually walk by himself in between the two lines, stand there, face his people, and say: 'Go home. We're here to fight the pipeline, not these people, and we can only win this with prayer.'"

Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza contrasted the aggressive police action with the treatment of the organizers of a standoff at an Oregon wildlife refuge (acquitted of federal charges on the same day as the police raid of the camp), saying "If you're white, you can occupy federal property ... and get found not guilty. No teargas, no tanks, no rubber bullets ... If you're indigenous and fighting to protect our earth, and the water we depend on to survive, you get tear gassed, media blackouts, tanks and all that."

On the evening of November 20, protesters attempted to open Backwater Bridge on Highway 1806, which had been blocked since October 27. The bridge is about a mile (1600 m) south of where the pipeline developer plans to drill. According to the sheriff's department, the bridge was closed for safety reasons "due to damage caused after protesters set numerous fires" on it on October 27. But the protesters believe that the police used the closure to "lock [them] in" and that the closure blocked access for emergency vehicles coming from the north.

A woman's arm was seriously injured by what she and supporters claim was an explosive flash-bang grenade thrown by law enforcement, but which law enforcement suggest may have been an exploding propane canister. The victim's father stated in a press conference that his daughter had seen a police officer throw the explosive device directly at her as she was backing away. The Morton County Sheriff's Department denied using concussion grenades, and reported that protesters were throwing expended propane canisters at police during this period.[excessive citations ] Law enforcement, including the ATF and North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, are investigating the incident.[needs update? ]

On February 22, 2017, the protest site was cleared. Although many left voluntarily, ten people were arrested. On February 23, National Guard and law enforcement officers evicted the remaining protesters. Thirty-three people were arrested. After the protest site was abandoned, sanitation crews cleared garbage from the protest; this included abandoned cars and human waste. Also abandoned were 12 dogs. North Dakota Department of Emergency Services estimated that about 21 million pounds of garbage was removed; the cost of cleaning up the protest site was about $1 million.

Continued conflicts and resulting attention on social media led to increasing national and global support for the protests. High profile activists, celebrities, and politicians spoke out in support of the tribe, including senator Bernie Sanders, and presidential candidate Jill Stein. Standing Rock Chairman David Archambault II addressed the tribe's positions at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. In December 2016, under President Barack Obama's administration, the Corps of Engineers denied an easement for construction of the pipeline under the Missouri River, though this decision was reversed the following month by the incoming administration of President Donald Trump. The pipeline was completed by April 2017, and its first oil was delivered on May 14.

In March 2020, a United States District Judge ruled that the government had not adequately studied the pipeline's "effects on the quality of the human environment", and ordered the United States Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a new environmental impact review. In July 2020, a District Court judge issued a ruling for the pipeline to be shut down and emptied of oil pending a new environmental review. The temporary shutdown order was overturned by a U.S. appeals court on August 5, though the environmental review was ordered to continue. The pipeline continues to operate.

During September 2014, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal (SRST) council met with Energy Transfer representatives for an initial consultation, which was more than a month before the pipeline's first formal submission to the Army Corps. At the beginning of the meeting, Councilman David Archambault II indicated the tribe's opposition to the project within treaty boundaries. Additional SRST representatives voiced opposition and concerns about the pipeline.

Cannonball River area, North Dakota

The Dakota Access Pipeline, a part of the Bakken pipeline project, is a 1,172-mile-long (1,886 km) underground oil pipeline in the United States. The pipeline was planned by Dakota Access, LLC, a subsidiary of a Dallas, Texas corporation named Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. It begins in the Bakken oil fields in Northwest North Dakota and travels in a relatively straight line southeast, through South Dakota and Iowa, ending at the oil terminal near Patoka, Illinois. According to court records, the pipeline was due for delivery on January 1, 2017.

Routing the pipeline across the Missouri River near Bismarck was rejected because of the route's proximity to municipal water sources; residential areas; roads, wetland, and waterway crossings. The Bismarck route would also have been 11 miles (18 km) longer. The alternative selected by the Corps of Engineers crosses underneath the Missouri River, half a mile (800 m) from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, and parallels the existing Northern Border Pipeline. A spill could have major adverse effects on the waters that the Standing Rock Reserve relies upon. Using a permit process that treated the pipeline as a series of small construction sites, the pipeline was granted an exemption from the environmental review required by the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

However, citing potential adverse effects on indigenous tribes, most notably the Standing Rock Sioux, in March and April 2016 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Interior (DOI), and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a formal Environmental Impact Assessment and issue an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

Noting that the water system serving Fort Yates on the Standing Rock Reservation was only 10 miles (16 km) downstream of where the pipeline would cross Lake Oahe and the Missouri River, the EPA recommended that the Army Corps revise its Environmental Assessment and open up a second public comment period. The DOI also expressed concerns about the pipeline's proximity to the tribe's water source. Waters of a sufficient quantity and quality are legally obligated to be held in reserve for the Standing Rock Community. However, more than 800,000 acres of Standing Rock's entrusted land risked being impacted by a leak or spill, which could severely impact the waters which the community relies upon for both drinking and spiritual purposes.

Despite the mass opposition to the Pipeline, as of August 2021, expansion construction continues; the line can now transport 750,000 barrels of oil daily, which is 180,000 more than previous limits. The company Energy Transfer plans to add pump stations to boost the pipeline's efficiency and speed. Once the full expansion is up and running, as much as 1.1 million barrels of oil will flow through the pipeline each day. The attorney of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe noted that the court ordered Corps review of the pipeline impact was intended "to study the impact of things before they occur, not after."

Brenda White Bull, descendant of Sitting Bull, speaks at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues about fight against Dakota Access and State Violence, April 25, 2017

Sacred Stone Camp was founded by Standing Rock's Historic Preservation Officer, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, on April 1, 2016, as a center for cultural preservation and spiritual resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline. In the spring and early summer of 2016, Allard and other Indigenous leaders focused on media outreach, resulting in tribal delegations and individuals coming to stand with them from all over the country and-eventually-the world. As the numbers grew beyond what the land could support, an overflow camp was also established nearby, which came to be known as the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ camp (the Lakȟótiyapi name for the Great Sioux Nation or Seven Fires Council). In September, Allard said that 26 of the 380 archaeological sites that face desecration along the pipeline route are held sacred to the Sioux Nations, the Arikara, the Mandan, and the Northern Cheyenne, comparing the pipeline's construction through said sites to genocide.

By late September, NBC News reported that members of more than 300 federally recognized Native American tribes were residing in the three main camps, alongside an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 additional pipeline resistance demonstrators. Several thousand more gathered at the camps on weekends. As winter approached, numbers grew lower, but the protesters winterized and prepared for an indefinite stay. In October, another camp called "Winter Camp" was established on Energy Transfer Partners private property-directly in the pipeline's proposed path. Citing eminent domain, Native American protesters declared that the land rightly belongs to them under the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Though the initial territory agreed to in the treaty was later broken up into smaller reservations, the treaty was never nullified and was thus being invoked as law. Morton County Sheriff, Kyle Kirchmeier, claimed that the Winter Camp was a threat to public safety, stating that "we can not have protesters blocking county roads, blocking state highways, or trespassing on private property." Following, on October 27, police in riot gear with crowd control equipment and supported by National Guard members removed the protesters from the new encampment. They used methods such as pepper spray, bean-bag shot guns, concussion grenades and mace. Law enforcement further used Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD), which are used to make noises as at piercing frequency and volume. Protestors remained on site nonetheless, setting blockades, bridges and tires on the highway afire.

On July 27, 2016, two days after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued the Environmental Assessment with a finding of "no significant impact", the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, supported by EarthJustice, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to stop the pipeline. The tribe also sought a preliminary injunction.

Later the same day, a joint statement was issued by the US Departments of Justice, Army, and Interior temporarily halting the project on federal land bordering or under the Lake Oahe reservoir. The US federal government asked the company for a "voluntary pause" on construction near that area until further study was done on the region extending 20 miles (32 km) around Lake Oahe. In closing the agency representatives said:

Finally, we fully support the rights of all Americans to assemble and speak freely. In recent days, we have seen thousands of demonstrators come together peacefully, with support from scores of sovereign tribal governments, to exercise their First Amendment rights and to voice heartfelt concerns about the environment and historic, sacred sites. It is now incumbent on all of us to develop a path forward that serves the broadest public interest.

Energy Transfer Partners rejected the request to voluntarily halt construction on all surrounding private land and resumed construction within 48 hours.

On September 13, chairman and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners Kelcy Warren responded to the federal government's request, saying concerns about the pipeline's impact on the water supply were "unfounded." Warren said that "multiple archaeological studies conducted with state historic preservation offices found no sacred items along the route". They did not indicate that they would voluntarily cease work on the pipeline. Warren wrote that the company will meet with officials in Washington "to understand their position and reiterate our commitment to bring the Dakota Access Pipeline into operation."

On November 14, the Army Corps of Engineers said it needed more time to study the impact of the plan. In a news release, they said: "The Army has determined that additional discussion and analysis are warranted in light of the history of the Great Sioux Nation's dispossessions of lands, the importance of Lake Oahe to the Tribe, our government-to-government relationship, and the statute governing easements through government property."

Energy Transfer Partners responded by criticizing the Obama administration for "political interference" and said that "further delay in the consideration of this case would add millions of dollars more each month in costs which cannot be recovered." North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple criticized the decision saying the pipeline would be safe and that the decision was "long overdue". Craig Stevens, spokesman for the MAIN Coalition, a labor group, called the Corps's announcement "yet another attempt at death by delay" and said the Obama administration "has chosen to further fan the flames of protest by more inaction." North Dakota Senator John Hoeven said in a statement that the delay "will only prolong the disruption in the region caused by protests and make life difficult for everyone who lives and works in the area."

Speaking on the PBS Newshour on November 16, Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren responded to questions about the Tribe's two main concerns, damage to ancestral sites and the potential of water contamination if a leak occurred:

Well, first of all, I think this is well known by now. We're not on any Indian property at all, no Native American property. We're on private lands. That's number one. Number two, this pipeline is new steel pipe. We're boring underneath Lake Oahe. It's going to go 90 feet to 150 feet (27.5-45.7 m) below the lake's surface. It's thick wall pipe, extra thick, by the way, more so than just the normal pipe that we lay. Also, on each side of the lake, there's automated valves that, if in the very, very unlikely situation there were to be a leak, our control room shuts down the pipe, encapsulates that small section that could be in peril. So, that's just not going to happen. Number one, we're not going to have a leak. I can't promise that, of course, but that - no one would get on airplanes if they thought they were going to crash. And, number two, there is no way there would be any crude contaminate their water supply. They're 70 miles (110 km) downstream.

On December 4, the Army announced that it would not grant an easement for the pipeline to be drilled under Lake Oahe. The announcement was made by the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works), Jo-Ellen Darcy:

Although we have had continuing discussion and exchanges of new information with the Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access, it's clear that there's more work to do. The best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing.

Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics Partners issued a same-day response:

The White House's directive today to the Corps for further delay is just the latest in a series of overt and transparent political actions by an administration which has abandoned the rule of law in favor of currying favor with a narrow and extreme political constituency. As stated all along, ETP and SXL fully expect to complete construction of the pipeline without any additional rerouting in and around Lake Oahe. Nothing this Administration has done today changes that in any way.

On January 24, 2017, newly elected President Donald Trump signed an executive order allowing the pipeline's construction to proceed. On February 8, 2017, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) granted Dakota Access, LLC an easement based on the Mineral Leasing Act to cross Lake Oahe and finish construction of the pipeline. On February 9, 2017, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe filed a motion for a restraining order citing Religious Freedom Restoration Act violations, claiming an oil spill would disrupt their ability to worship freely. This preliminary injunction was rejected on March 7, 2017. On February 14, 2017, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe filed a motion for summary judgment. The motion asked the Court to rule on unresolved legal questions concerning USACE, including the meeting of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements and the violation of Tribal treaty rights. The motion addressed three claims: 1) the lawful requirement of a full, transparent and public environmental review for any federal action that has "significant" environmental effects, 2) Tribal treaty rights that guarantee the integrity of their reservation, and 3) the reversal of decisions from the previous administration.

Federal Court finds the environmental study inadequate

On June 14, 2017, Federal Judge James Boasberg issued his third opinion in the matter, ruling that the Corps permits authorizing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River "substantially complied with NEPA in many areas" but did not adequately consider certain aspects of the law. In a ninety-one page decision to remand the matter to the Corps for supplementation of the record, Judge Boasberg wrote, "the Court agrees that [the Corps] did not adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice, or the degree to which the pipeline's effects are likely to be highly controversial". Boasberg's decision came just weeks after crude oil had started pumping through the pipeline. Judge Boasberg asked the parties to submit legal briefs on the question of whether the Court should shut down the pipeline pending the completion of a lawful environmental review.

On August 7, 2017, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe filed a legal brief arguing in favor of pipeline shutdown during the environmental review process. The Tribes received support from law professors and practitioners, tribes and tribal organizations, and other amicus parties. The Court granted the Tribes' motion for summary judgment for three reasons. First, the Court held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to address expert critiques of Dakota Access, LLC's oil spill risk analysis. Second, the Court found fault in USACE's disregard of impacts an oil spill would have on the Tribes' treaty rights to fish and hunt. Finally, the Court found that USACE conducted a skewed assessment that reached the conclusion that the selected site raised no environmental justice concerns. Under the Court's order, USACE will reassess these questions and come to a new decision on if a full environmental impact statement is required.

On October 11, 2017, the Court ruled that DAPL could continue to operate while USACE reassessed the environmental impact of the pipeline. While the Court did not find that shutting down the pipeline would cause a major economic disruption as claimed by DAPL, they refused to shut the pipeline down during the impact study due to the possibility that USACE would be able to justify its decision to not do a full environmental review. USACE predicts that the review will be finished by April 2018. Following the Court's finding a statement was issued by Earthjustice Attorney Jan Hasselman, who is representing the Tribe.

Today's decision is a disappointing continuation of a historic pattern: other people get all the profits, and the Tribes get all the risk and harm. The court already found that the Corps violated the law when it issued the permits without thoroughly considering the impact on the people of Standing Rock. The company should not be allowed to continue operating while the Corps studies that threat.,

Safety measures imposed

On December 4, 2017, following a 200,000 gallon Keystone pipeline oil spill in November 2017, Judge Boasberg imposed several interim measures over the ongoing operation of the Dakota Access pipeline. The Court ordered three measures, which had been requested by the Tribe. According to a report published by Earthjustice, a non-profit public interest law organization dedicated to environmental issues:

The Court ordered the Corps and DAPL to work with the Tribes to complete oil spill response plans at Lake Oahe. Up to now, the Tribe has been kept in the dark about spill response planning and was not involved in the process of developing plans to address spills at Lake Oahe. Second, the Court ordered an independent audit of DAPL's compliance with the permit conditions and standards. The Tribe has to be involved in the selection of an auditor. Finally, DAPL must file regular reports on any incidents or repairs on the pipeline. Such reporting is not currently required by law, which means the public does not learn about the nearly constant spills and leaks of oil that occur on major pipelines.

The conditions were all opposed by the Corps and by DAPL.

Current Legal Proceedings (2020-2021)

In July 2020, saying federal officials failed to carry out a complete analysis of its environmental impacts, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled that the pipeline must be shut down by August 5 and remain shutdown while the Army Corps of Engineers conducts a more extensive environmental review than the one done that allowed the pipeline to begin transporting oil three years previously. Pipeline owner Energy Transfer said they would appeal. On August 5, the Court of Appeals sided with Energy Transfer to allow the pipeline to stay open, saying the lower-court judge "did not make the findings necessary for injunctive relief." However the appellate court did not grant Energy Transfer's motion to block the review, saying the company had "failed to make a strong showing of likely success."

As of May 2021, the pipeline was granted legal permission to restart operations, on the grounds that the Standing Rock legal team had fail to demonstrate to the court ""likelihood of irreparable injury" from continued operation of the pipeline. Later, in July 2021, Boasberg ruled against the lawsuit filed by Standing Rock team against the operation of the pipeline. Despite ruling against the federal judge laid out how the Standing Rock Tribe might continue to challenge the ongoing environmental review. Boasberg also left the possibility of reopening the lawsuit if any of his previous rulings from the past five years were violated by the Corps or Energy Transfer.

Federal prosecutors brought indictments against at least five indigenous activists from the protests. Dion Ortiz, James "Angry Bird" White, Michael "Little Feather" Giron, and Michael "Rattler" Markus were all convicted of one count of civil disorder. Red Fawn Fallis was convicted of civil disorder and illegal possession of a gun by a convicted felon. The gun which she was convicted for possessing went off as she was being "tackled by police officers, who were attempting to put her in handcuffs [when] three gunshots allegedly went off alongside her. No one was injured in the shooting incident." She was given the largest sentencing of any protester at the time, having to be held in federal prison for four years and nine months. The judge who heard Red Fawn's case did not allow her defence team to cite her treaty rights or "other issues related to her arrest at anti-pipeline protests near the Standing Rock Sioux's Tribe's reservation border." In effect, Red Fawn accepted a plea deal as she believed that in withholding such important evidence, she would not have received a fair trial.

On August 11-12, 18 more people were arrested, including Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archambault II who was charged with disorderly conduct. Along with the tribal council, Archambault had sued the Army Corps of Engineers days before his arrest. He was himself sued on August 16 by Dakota Access, LLC, which sought "restraining orders and unspecified monetary damages."

In 2019, Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya were indicted on nine federal criminal charges, including setting 11 fires during the protests. The two set fire to machinery and tools and then used a torch to pierce the metal piping and valves. On June 30, 2021 Reznicek was sentenced to eight years in federal prison for a single count of damaging an energy facility. The remaining charges were dismissed.

On September 7 an arrest warrant was also issued in Morton County for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka on misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief. Stein had spray-painted "I approve this message" and Baraka wrote the word "decolonize" on a bulldozer.

A warrant for journalist Amy Goodman's arrest was issued by Morton County on September 8. She was charged with criminal trespass related to the filming done on September 3. The prosecutor, Ladd Erickson, said Goodman was like a protester because she was only giving time to the protesters' side of the story. In response to praise from Erickson, Matt Taibbi wrote, "a prosecutor who arrests a reporter because he doesn't think she's 'balanced' enough is basically telling future reporters what needs to be in their stories to avoid arrest. This is totally improper and un-American."

On October 1, Canadian journalist Ed Ou, on assignment with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to cover the protests, was detained at the US border for six hours, with his cell phones and other electronic media confiscated. Ou was eventually denied entry to the US without explanation. The American Civil Liberties Union requested that any data collected from Ou's electronic devices be destroyed and that he be given assurance that he would not be harassed again.

Speaking on October 5, Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archambault II said that as of that date 135 anti-pipeline demonstrators had been arrested. Archambault also said that law enforcement officers were "heightening the danger" by using anti-riot gear. Saying, "Confronting men, women, and children while outfitted in gear more suited for the battlefield is a disproportionate response", Amnesty International also expressed concern about the militant response to the protesters.

On October 13, Goodman announced her intention to turn herself in to the Morton County-Mandan Corrections Center on Monday, October 17, to face misdemeanor riot charges. (Though she had originally been charged with criminal trespass, the prosecutor said that there were "legal issues with proving the notice of trespassing requirements in the statute.") She stated that she would be fighting the charges against her as a First Amendment violation. The Committee to Protect Journalists, the North Dakota Newspaper Association, the American Civil Liberties Union in North Dakota, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation all expressed concern over the developing challenge to freedom of the press.

On October 17, District Judge John Grinsteiner did not find probable cause for multiple riot charges, including the one brought against Goodman. Following the judge's decision, Kirchmeier reasserted that trespassing would lead to arrest, while the state prosecutor said that the investigation would remain open pending new evidence.

According to the Water Protector Legal Collective over 800 state criminal cases were brought by North Dakota prosecutors. Of these nearly 400 resulted in dismissals of charges, 42 ended in not-guilty verdicts at trial, nearly 200 were subjected to pre-trial diversion, and just 26 cases ended in convictions after trials. There are still 42 open cases before the state court.

Dismissal of lawsuit against Greenpeace USA

In 2019 a federal court in North Dakota dismissed as unfounded a racketeering and defamation lawsuit filed by Energy Transfer Partners LP, the builder of the 1,000-mile Dakota Access Pipeline, against Greenpeace USA, EarthFirst and BankTrack for their pipeline protests. The lawsuit alleged Greenpeace USA misled the public with false claims about the Standing Rock Sioux tribes' sacred sites and the likelihood the pipeline would contaminate the Missouri River in North Dakota. In contrast, a 2018 Greenpeace report said Energy Transfer pipelines and those owned by the company's subsidiaries "spilled over 500 times in the last decade."

In response to the court's ruling of insufficient evidence, Tom Wetterer, general counsel to Greenpeace USA, said the ruling "sends a clear message to companies trying to muzzle civil society that corporate overreach will not be tolerated. It is also a check on corporate efforts to silence dissent."

The Intercept online newspaper earlier reported Energy Transfer Partners hired the private security firm of TigerSwan to gather information for the lawsuit via fake social media accounts and infiltration of protest camps.

Solidarity rally in Saint Paul, Minnesota, September 2016.

Standing Rock solidarity march in San Francisco, November 2016.

Native Nations Rise march in Washington D.C., March 2017.

Many Sioux Tribes passed resolutions in support of Standing Rock, including the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Crow Creek Tribe, the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Oklahoma tribes also expressed support for the pipeline protest movement. In August, Principal Chief Bill John Baker of the Cherokee Nation said, "As Indian people, we have a right to protect our lands and protect our water rights. That's our responsibility to the next seven generations."

Field reporter Jordan Chariton (of The Young Turks' on-the-road program TYT Politics) was one of the most active journalists participating in the protests. He commented on the scant presence of journalists from mainstream networks such as CNN and MSNBC.

ReZpect Our Water is an indigenous youth group that formed to oppose the pipeline. They have been very active in raising public awareness through social media, petitions, teach-ins, rallies, and videos. In May 2016, 13-year-old Anna Lee Rain Yellowhammer and thirty young people launched a petition that opposed the pipeline. It quickly gathered over 80,000 signatures, including celebrity endorsements such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Russell.

In April 2016, ReZpect Our Water organized a 2,000 mile cross-country "spiritual run" from North Dakota to Washington, D.C., to protest the construction of the pipeline. Upon the groups arrival they delivered a petition with 160,000 signatures to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

On September 16, a rally and march was held in Seattle to show solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The mayor of Seattle and city council members joined leaders from Northwest tribes from Quinualt, Makah, Lummi, Suquamish, Tulalip, Swinomish, Puyallup and others to show opposition to the pipeline. Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Indian Nation and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, said that while the tribes are "determined to win this fight", a "deeper fix" is needed. "The U.S. must recognize that we have political equality. This is much larger than a specific infrastructure project. It goes to the fundamental relationship."

According to the Grand Forks Herald, on October 13 the governments of 19 cities, including St. Louis and Minneapolis, had passed ordinances to support the Standing Rock tribe in opposition of the pipeline.

In October, the Morton County Sheriff requested police from surrounding areas to assist in regulating the protests near the pipeline. The Dane County Sheriff's office of Wisconsin sent 10 deputies to aid the local police, but they were recalled a few days later because of opposition from the Dane County residents and county officials.

On November 15, hundreds of cities held protests against the pipeline in a coordinated protest which organizers called a "National Day of Action." Hundreds of protesters gathered peacefully in Chicago, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Denver, and other cities; dozens of protesters were arrested, including demonstrators in Mandan, North Dakota, where protesters were arrested after blocking a railroad.

Tara Houska, Director for Honor the Earth, spoke at a rally in New York City saying, "Because of the power of social media and the millions of those at Standing Rock, the Army Corps are going to invite the tribe in to discuss their concerns." Senator Bernie Sanders spoke at a protest in front of the White House. Robert Kennedy Jr. visited the protest camp and spoke to the protesters. He commented on the PBS Newshour: "I think they have a lot of courage. I think they're standing up for America, that they're standing up in the face of a bully."

Thanksgiving Day has been described as a reminder of the strained relationship between the U.S. government and native people. On the November 24 holiday, several thousand continued to protest the pipeline; some estimated that the number of protesters, which fluctuates, doubled that day. Hundreds of people joined the protest that day, including groups from California, Oregon, Wisconsin, Colorado, South Carolina, and Washington.

Protesters built a floating bridge to Turtle Island, considered sacred ground, and 400 gathered near the bridge, some crossing over to perform a prayer ceremony.

Actress Jane Fonda was one of a delegation of 50 people who served a Thanksgiving dinner in nearby Mandan, capturing media attention. Business owners traveled from as far as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to serve food to protesters at Standing Rock.

A Thanksgiving Day protest in Portland, Oregon drew about 350 in heavy rain.

In November, a group called Veterans Stand for Standing Rock formed to participate in nonviolent intervention to defend the demonstrators from what the group has called "assault and intimidation at the hands of the militarized police force." According to The New York Times, "as many as 2,000 veterans" indicated that they would gather at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to serve as "human shields" for protesters. The organizers of these protests included a retired Baltimore police sergeant and Wes Clark, Jr., the son of former Supreme NATO Commander and 2004 presidential candidate Wesley Clark. Wes Clark, Jr is affiliated with The Young Turks.

Following the executive order made by new U.S. president Trump in January 2017 which overturned the decision of former President Obama to halt the construction of the pipeline and the February order in which he authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to proceed, US veterans returned to Standing Rock to a form human shield to protect Dakota Access pipeline protesters. Air force veteran Elizabeth Williams said, "We are prepared to put our bodies between Native elders and a privatized military force. We've stood in the face of fire before. We feel a responsibility to use the skills we have."

Along with the hashtag #NoDAPL, many other hashtags sprang up on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to protest the pipeline. The hashtags included #ReZpectOurWater, which is a play on "reservations", #StandWithStandingRock, and #WaterisLife. Activist Naomi Klein posted a Facebook video in which she interviewed 13-year-old water protector, Takota Iron Eyes, which gained more than a million views in 24 hours.

In December 2016, Klein, writing an editorial in The Nation shortly after the Army Corps of Engineers had turned down the permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline to be built under the Missouri River, said, "The Lesson from Standing Rock: Organizing and Resistance Can Win." As a long-standing climate change activist, Klein said that past resistance has brought about change incrementally and only after a delay following mass actions. However, she wrote, Standing Rock had been "different."

However, calling the Army Corps of Engineers request for further study an "incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process," on January 24, newly elected President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum to advance the construction of the pipeline.

When Dakota Access Pipeline protests began in 2016, then 34 year-old Two Bears was a tribal council member. His community of Cannon Ball hosted one of the encampments until late 2016. A year later, he created an organization named "Indigenized Energy," which aims to bring renewable energy sources to Native communities. In February 2019, the organization's first solar-panel project was completed in Standing Rock. This project is of importance to Two Bears and to many indigenous communities who claim that The Dakota Access Pipeline protests are what "woke you people up, but we have known for a long time that the colonial capitalism corporate model is attacking this world [...] The energy system dominant across this country is not in line with Native values, and the solution that I came up with is that tribal nations need to create their own energy companies using renewable energy sources." This grassroots solution is following the historic and ongoing citing of polluting industries near indigenous communities. Meaning, for Two Bears and many others, The Dakota Access Pipeline is not an isolated incident, but rather, it is reflective of the larger citing practices of polluting industries where Native communities have "taken the pollutive brunt of the fossil fuels industry."

In December 2016, while still directed by the Obama administration, the Army Corps of Engineers decided that further study to address tribal concerns was needed and launched a study on January 18, 2017. But on January 24, newly elected President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum to advance the construction of the pipeline under "terms and conditions to be negotiated". The order would expedite the environmental review that Trump described as an "incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process."

On February 7, 2017, Trump authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to proceed, ending its environmental impact assessment and the associated public comment period. The director of the Indigenous Environmental Network released a statement saying: "The granting of an easement, without any environmental review or tribal consultation, is not the end of this fight-it is the new beginning. Expect mass resistance far beyond what Trump has seen so far. ... Our tribal nations and Indigenous grassroots peoples on the front lines have had no input on this process." Standing Rock chairman David Archambault II said, "We are not opposed to energy independence. We are opposed to reckless and politically motivated development projects, like DAPL, that ignore our treaty rights and risk our water. Creating a second Flint does not make America great again." Appearing as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on February 12, actress and activist Shailene Woodley said that, rather than gather at the Dakota protest site, the best way to oppose the pipeline may be to boycott banks that fund it and to take part in local protests.

In September 2016, Senator Bernie Sanders spoke to a crowd of about 3,000 members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribal nations and supporters at a protest held outside of the White House. Saying "the pipeline threatens the environment and water resources and exploits Native Americans", he asked President Obama to take action and conduct a full environmental and cultural impact analysis of the project, which he believed would kill the pipeline. Following the use of the National Guard and police in riot gear to remove protesters from a protest camp in October, Sanders again called on the president to suspend construction of the pipeline. In a letter to the President, Sanders said in part: "It is deeply distressing to me that the federal government is putting the profits of the oil industry ahead of the treaty and sovereign rights of Native American communities. Mr. President, you took a bold and principled stand against the Keystone Pipeline - I ask you to take a similar stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline."

Calling the proposed pipeline route "the ripest case of environmental racism I have seen in a long time", on October 26 the Reverend Jesse Jackson announced support for the movement, saying, "The tribes of this country have sacrificed a lot so this great country could be built. With promises broken, land stolen and sacred lands desecrated, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is standing up for their right to clean water. They have lost land for settlers to farm, more land for gold in the Black Hills, and then again, even more, land for the dam that was built for hydropower. When will the taking stop?"

In September, Obama spoke to tribal representatives, saying, "I know that many of you have come together across tribes and across the country to support the community at Standing Rock. And together, you're making your voices heard." He again discussed the protest movement on November 2 saying that "we're going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of First Americans."

Several members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives weighed in on the protest on November 29, 2016. Senators Al Franken of Minnesota and Cory Booker of New Jersey called upon U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate the tactics of law enforcement officers against peaceful protesters, and to send monitors to track any violence against protesters. Several members of the House made statements as well, and Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii announced plans to join hundreds of other military veterans in protecting the protesters in early December.

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Dakota Access Pipeline protests - Wikipedia

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The Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, also known by the hashtag # NoDAPL, were a series of grassroots Native American protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the northern United States that began in April 2016. Protests ended on February 23, 2017 when National Guard and law enforcement officers evicted the last remaining protesters.

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Racial Equality

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Who Was Malcolm X?

Malcolm X was a minister, human rights activist and prominent Black nationalist leader who served as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and 1960s. Due largely to his efforts, the Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952 to 40,000 members by 1960.

A naturally gifted orator, Malcolm X exhorted Black people to cast off the shackles of racism "by any means necessary," including violence. The fiery civil rights leader broke with the Nation of Islam shortly before his assassination in 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he had been preparing to deliver a speech.

Early Life and Family

Malcolm X was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. He was the fourth of eight children born to Louise, a homemaker, and Earl Little, a preacher who was also an active member of the local chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and avid supporter of Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey.

Due to Earl Little's civil rights activism, the family was subjected to frequent harassment from white supremacist groups including the Ku Klux Klan and one of its splinter factions, the Black Legion. In fact, Malcolm Little had his first encounter with racism before he was even born.

"When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, 'a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home,'" Malcolm later remembered. "Brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out."

The harassment continued when Malcolm was four years old, and local Klan members smashed all of the family's windows. To protect his family, Earl Little moved them from Omaha to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1926 and then to Lansing, Michigan, in 1928.

However, the racism the family encountered in Lansing proved even greater than in Omaha. Shortly after the Littles moved in, a racist mob set their house on fire in 1929, and the town's all-white emergency responders refused to do anything.

"The white police and firemen came and stood around watching as the house burned to the ground," Malcolm X later remembered. Earl Little moved the family to East Lansing where he built a new home.

Two years later, in 1931, Earl Little's dead body was discovered lying across the municipal streetcar tracks. Although Malcolm X's family believed his father was murdered by white supremacists from whom he had received frequent death threats, the police officially ruled Earl Little's death a streetcar accident, thereby voiding the large life insurance policy he had purchased in order to provide for his family in the event of his death.

Malcolm X's mother never recovered from the shock and grief over her husband's death. In 1937, she was committed to a mental institution where she remained for the next 26 years. Malcolm and his siblings were separated and placed in foster homes.

Education

In 1938, Malcolm was kicked out of school and sent to a juvenile detention home in Mason, Michigan. The white couple who ran the home treated him well, but he wrote in his autobiography that he was treated more like a "pink poodle" or a "pet canary" than a human being.

He attended Mason High School where he was one of only a few Black students. He excelled academically and was well-liked by his classmates, who elected him class president.

A turning point in Malcolm Little's childhood came in 1939 when his English teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he answered that he wanted to be a lawyer. His teacher responded, "One of life's first needs is for us to be realistic ... you need to think of something you can be ... why don't you plan on carpentry?"

Having thus been told in no uncertain terms that there was no point in a Black child pursuing education, Malcolm X dropped out of school the following year, at the age of 15.

After quitting school, Malcolm X moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, Ella, about whom he later recalled, "She was the first really proud Black woman I had ever seen in my life. She was plainly proud of her very dark skin. This was unheard of among Negroes in those days."

Ella landed Malcolm a job shining shoes at the Roseland Ballroom. However, out on his own on the streets of Boston, Malcolm X became acquainted with the city's criminal underground and soon turning to selling drugs.

He got another job as kitchen help on the Yankee Clipper train between New York and Boston and fell further into a life of drugs and crime. Sporting flamboyant pinstriped zoot suits, he frequented nightclubs and dance halls and turned more fully to crime to finance his lavish lifestyle.

Time in Jail

In 1946, Malcolm X was arrested on charges of larceny and sentenced to 10 years in jail. To pass the time during his incarceration, he read constantly, devouring books from the prison library in an attempt make up for the years of education he had missed by dropping out of high school.

Also while in prison, Malcolm was visited by several siblings who had joined the Nation of Islam, a small sect of Black Muslims who embraced the ideology of Black nationalism - the idea that in order to secure freedom, justice and equality, Black Americans needed to establish their own state entirely separate from white Americans.

He changed his name to Malcolm X and converted to the Nation of Islam before his release from prison in 1952.

Nation of Islam

Now a free man, Malcolm X traveled to Detroit, Michigan, where he worked with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, to expand the movement's following among Black Americans nationwide.

Malcolm X became the minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem and Temple No. 11 in Boston, while also founding new temples in Hartford and Philadelphia. In 1960, he established a national newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, in order to further promote the message of the Nation of Islam.

Articulate, passionate and an inspirational orator, Malcolm X exhorted Black people to cast off the shackles of racism "by any means necessary," including violence. "You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-cheek revolution," he said. "There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution."

His militant proposals - a violent revolution to establish an independent Black nation - won Malcolm X large numbers of followers as well as many fierce critics. Due primarily to the efforts of Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952, to 40,000 members by 1960.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S MALCOLM X FACT CARD

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

By the early 1960s, Malcolm X had emerged as a leading voice of a radicalized wing of the civil rights movement, presenting a dramatic alternative to Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a racially-integrated society achieved by peaceful means.

Dr. King was highly critical of what he viewed as Malcolm X's destructive demagoguery. "I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice," King once said.

Becoming a Mainstream Sunni Muslim

A rupture with Elijah Muhammad proved much more traumatic. In 1963, Malcolm X became deeply disillusioned when he learned that his hero and mentor had violated many of his own teachings, most flagrantly by carrying on many extramarital affairs; Muhammad had, in fact, fathered several children out of wedlock.

Malcolm's feelings of betrayal, combined with Muhammad's anger over Malcolm's insensitive comments regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, led Malcolm X to leave the Nation of Islam in 1964.

That same year, Malcolm X embarked on an extended trip through North Africa and the Middle East. The journey proved to be both a political and spiritual turning point in his life. He learned to place the American civil rights movement within the context of a global anti-colonial struggle, embracing socialism and pan-Africanism.

Malcolm X also made the Hajj, the traditional Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, during which he converted to traditional Islam and again changed his name, this time to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

After his epiphany at Mecca, Malcolm X returned to the United States less angry and more optimistic about the prospects for a peaceful resolution to America's race problems. "The true brotherhood I had seen had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision," he said. "America is the first country ... that can actually have a bloodless revolution."

Assassination

Just as Malcolm X appeared to be embarking on an ideological transformation with the potential to dramatically alter the course of the civil rights movement, he was assassinated.

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X took the stage for a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. He had just begun addressing the room when multiple men rushed the stage and began firing guns.

Struck numerous times at close range, Malcolm X was declared dead after arriving at a nearby hospital. Three members of the Nation of Islam were tried and sentenced to life in prison for murdering the activist.
READ MORE: The Assassination of Malcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

In the early 1960s, Malcolm X began working with acclaimed author Alex Haley on an autobiography. The book details Malcolm X's life experiences and his evolving views on racial pride, Black nationalism and pan-Africanism.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965 after his assassination to near-universal praise. The New York Times called it a "brilliant, painful, important book," and Time magazine listed it as one of the 10 most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.

Movies

Malcolm X has been the subject of numerous movies, stage plays and other works, and has been portrayed by actors like James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman and Mario Van Peebles.

In 1992, Spike Lee directed Denzel Washington in the title role of his movie Malcolm X. Both the film and Washington's portrayal of Malcolm X received wide acclaim and were nominated for several awards, including two Academy Awards.

Wife and Children

Malcolm X married Betty Shabazz in 1958. The couple had six daughters.

Legacy

In the immediate aftermath of Malcolm X's death, commentators largely ignored his recent spiritual and political transformation and criticized him as a violent rabble-rouser.

But especially after the publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, he will be remembered for underscoring the value of a truly free populace by demonstrating the great lengths to which human beings will go to secure their freedom.

"Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression," he said. "Because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action."

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Malcolm X was a minister, human rights activist and prominent Black nationalist leader who served as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and 1960s. Due largely to his efforts, the Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952 to 40,000 members by 1960.

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LGBTQI Rights

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Quick Facts
"All men are created equal. No matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words.""Hope will never be silent.""I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living."

Name

Harvey Milk

Birth Date

May 22, 1930

Death Date

November 27, 1978

Education

Bay Shore High School, New York State College for Teachers in Albany

Place of Birth

Woodmere, New York

Place of Death

San Francisco, California

AKA

Harvey Milk

Nickname

"Mayor of Castro Street"

Full Name

Harvey Bernard Milk

Who Was Harvey Milk?

Gay rights activist and community leader Harvey Milk made history when he became one of the first openly gay officials in the United States in 1977 when he was elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors. He was tragically shot and killed the following year, and numerous books and films have been made about his life.

Early Years

Milk was born on May 22, 1930, in Woodmere, New York. Reared in a small middle-class Jewish family, Milk was one of two boys born to William and Minerva Milk. A well-rounded, well-liked student, Milk played football and sang in the opera at Bay Shore High School. Like his brother, Robert, he also worked at the family department store, Milk's.

After graduating from the New York State College for Teachers in 1951, Milk joined the U.S. Navy, ultimately serving as a diving instructor at a base in San Diego, California, during the Korean War. Following his discharge in 1955, Milk moved to New York City, where he worked a variety of jobs, including public school teacher, production associate for several high-profile Broadway musicals, stock analyst and Wall Street investment banker. He soon tired of finance, though, and befriended gay radicals who frequented Greenwich Village.

New Life in San Francisco

In late 1972, bored with his life in New York, Milk moved to San Francisco, California. There, he opened a camera shop called Castro Camera on Castro Street, putting his life and work right in the heart of the city's gay community.

For much of his life, Milk had stayed quiet about his personal life. He had known since high school that he was gay, and even in the wake of an emerging gay rights movement, the deliberate and careful Milk chose to remain on the sidelines. But things had started to turn for him toward the end of his time in New York, as he befriended a number of gay radicals who frequented Greenwich Village.

In San Francisco, his life and outspoken politics evolved even further. As Castro Camera increasingly became a neighborhood center, Milk found his voice as a leader and activist. In 1973, he declared his candidacy for a position on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. A novice politician with little money, Milk lost the election, but the experience did not deter him from trying again. Two years later, he narrowly lost a second election for the same seat. By then, Milk had become a political force-an outspoken leader in the gay community with political connections that included San Francisco mayor George Moscone, Assembly speaker and future city mayor Willie Brown and future United States senator Dianne Feinstein.

In 1977, Milk, who was known affectionately as the "Mayor of Castro Street," finally won a seat on the San Francisco City-County Board. He was inaugurated on January 9, 1978, becoming the city's first openly gay officer, as well as one of the first openly gay individuals to be elected to office in the United States.

While his campaign certainly incorporated gay rights into his platform, Milk also wanted to tackle a wide variety of issues, from childcare to housing to a civilian police review board.

Assassination

Milk's ascension had come at an important time for the gay community. While many psychiatrists still considered homosexuality a mental illness at this time, the liberal Moscone had become an early supporter of gay rights and had abolished the city's anti-sodomy law. Moscone had also appointed several gays and lesbians to a number of high-profile positions within San Francisco.

On the other side of Moscone was Supervisor Dan White, a Vietnam veteran and former police officer and fireman, who was troubled by what he perceived as a breakdown in traditional values and a growing tolerance of homosexuality. Elected to the San Francisco City-County Board in 1977, he frequently clashed with the more liberal Milk on policy issues.

A year after his election, in 1978, White resigned from the board, citing that his salary of $9,600 wasn't enough to support his family. But White was prodded on by his police supporters and subsequently changed his mind regarding his resignation and asked Moscone to reappoint him. The mayor refused, however, encouraged by Milk and others to fill White's spot with a more liberal board member. For White, who was convinced that men like Moscone and Milk were driving his city "downhill," it was a devastating blow.

On November 27, 1978, White entered City Hall with a loaded .38 revolver. He avoided the metal detectors by entering through a basement window that had been negligently left open for ventilation. His first stop was at the mayor's office, where he and Moscone began arguing, eventually moving to a private room so that they could not be heard. Once there, Moscone again refused to re-appoint White, and White shot the mayor twice in the chest and twice in the head. White then went down the corridor and shot Milk, twice in the chest, once in the back and twice again in the head. Soon after, he turned himself in at the police station where he used to work.

Dan White's Trial

White's trial was marked by what came to be known as the "Twinkie defense," as his lawyers claimed that the normally stable White had grown slovenly prior to the shootings due to abandoning his usually healthy diet and instead indulging in sugary junk food such as Coke, doughnuts and Twinkies. In a surprising move, a jury convicted White of voluntary manslaughter rather than murder, and White would subsequently serve just six years in prison. In 1985, a year after his release, a distressed White committed suicide.

As a result of White's downgraded conviction, peaceful demonstrations by Castro's gay community outside City Hall turned violent. More than 5,000 policemen responded by entering nightclubs armed with truncheons and assaulting patrons. By the riot's end, 124 people were injured, including 59 policemen. This episode is known in history as "The White Night Riots."

Movie

In the years since the killings, Milk's legacy as a leader and pioneer has endured, with numerous books and films made about his life. In 2008, Sean Penn starred as Milk in the acclaimed biopic Milk. Penn ended up winning the 2009 Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal of the slain politician.

U.S. Navy Ship

In July 2016, the U.S. Navy announced it would be naming a yet-to-be constructed tanker after Milk in his honor. The ship would be called the USNS Harvey Milk.

Milk's nephew praised the decision, saying it would send "a green light to all the brave men and women who serve our nation: that honesty and authenticity are held up among the highest ideals of of nation's military".

San Francisco politician Scott Wiener also celebrated the announcement. "When Harvey Milk served in the military, he couldn't tell anyone who he truly was," he wrote in a statement. "Now our country is telling the men and women who serve, and the entire world, that we honor and support people for who they are."

However, some critics argue that Milk would not have wanted such an honor, citing Milk was opposed to the Vietnam War.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

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"All men are created equal. No matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words." "Hope will never be silent." "I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living."

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Dis/Abilities Equality

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Meet Honourable Alshaymaa Kwegyir - People with albinism, by United Nations Human Rights

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Honourable Alshaymaa Kwegyir, Parliamentarian and Activist. Read her story and how she face the challenges of albinism.

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Racial Equality

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Racial Equality

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Daisy Bates was an African American civil rights activist and newspaper publisher who documented the battle to end segregation in Arkansas.

Synopsis

Daisy Bates was born on November 11, 1914, in Huttig, Arkansas. She married journalist Christopher Bates and they operated a weekly African-American newspaper, the Arkansas State Press. Bates became president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP and played a crucial role in the fight against segregation, which she documented in her book The Long Shadow of Little Rock. She died in 1999.

NAACP Presidency

Civil rights activist, writer, publisher. Born Daisy Lee Gatson on November 11, 1914, in Huttig, Arkansas. Bates's childhood was marked by tragedy. Her mother was sexually assaulted and murdered by three white men and her father left her. She was raised by friends of the family.

As a teenager, Bates met Lucious Christopher "L.C." Bates, an insurance agent and an experienced journalist. The couple married in the early 1940s and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. Together they operated the Arkansas State Press, a weekly African-American newspaper. The paper championed civil rights, and Bates joined in the civil rights movement. She became the president of Arkansas chapter of the National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1952.

As the head of the NAACP's Arkansas branch, Bates played a crucial role in the fight against segregation. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court declared that school segregation was unconstitutional in the landmark case known as Brown v. Board of Education. Even after that ruling, African American students who tried to enroll in white schools were turned away in Arkansas. Bates and her husband chronicled this battle in their newspaper.

Little Rock Nine

In 1957, she helped nine African American students to become the first to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, who became known as the Little Rock Nine. The group first tried to go to the school on September 4. A group of angry whites jeered at them as they arrived. The governor, Orval Faubus, opposed school integration and sent members of the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from entering the school. Despite the enormous amount of animosity they faced from white residents of the city, the students were undeterred from their mission to attend the school.

Bates' home became the headquarters for the battle to integrate Central High School and she served as a personal advocate and supporter to the students. President Dwight D. Eisenhower became involved in the conflict and ordered federal troops to go to Little Rock to uphold the law and protect the Little Rock Nine. With U.S. soldiers providing security, the Little Rock Nine left from Bates' home for their first day of school on September 25, 1957. Bates remained close with the Little Rock Nine, offering her continuing support as they faced harassment and intimidation from people against desegregation.

Later Activism

Bates also received numerous threats, but this would not stop her from her work. The newspaper she and her husband worked on was closed in 1959 because of low adverting revenue. Three years later, her account of the school integration battle was published as The Long Shadow of Little Roc k. For a few years, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the Democratic National Committee and on antipoverty projects for the Lyndon B. Johnson's administration.

Bates returned to Little Rock in the mid-1960s and spent much of her time on community programs. After the death of her husband in 1980, she also resuscitated their newspaper for several years, from 1984 to 1988. Bates died on November 4, 1999, Little Rock, Arkansas.

For her career in social activism, Bates received numerous awards, including an honorary degree from the University of Arkansas. She is best remembered as a guiding force behind one of the biggest battles for school integration in the nation's history.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

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Daisy Bates was an African American civil rights activist and newspaper publisher who documented the battle to end segregation in Arkansas. Daisy Bates was born on November 11, 1914, in Huttig, Arkansas. She married journalist Christopher Bates and they operated a weekly African-American newspaper, the Arkansas State Press.

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Gun Control

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Emma González (born November 11, 1999) is an American activist and advocate for gun control. As a high school senior she survived the February 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, and in response co-founded the gun-control advocacy group Never Again MSD.

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Freedom for Saudis

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There was an international campaign to free Badawi, comprising street protests, petitions, letters, and social media activity. The hashtag "JeSuisRaif", echoing Je suis Charlie , trended in January 2015. The readiness of some Saudi doctors to perform medical assessments prior to floggings has been questioned, and described as doctors participating in acts of torture.

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Political Freedom (Argentinian)

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Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

Madres de Plaza de Mayo

Second "March of Resistance" held on December 9 and 10, 1982. The flag reads "Reappearance alive of the 30.000 desaparecidos"

Formation | 1977
Founder | Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino, María Ponce de Bianco, Josefina García de Noia, Hebe de Bonafini, Mirta Acuña de Baravalle, and others
Founded at | Buenos Aires, Argentina
Methods | Nonviolent resistance
Leader | Hebe de Bonafini

Key people

Alice Domon, Léonie Duquet, Haydeé Gastelú, María Adela Gard de Antokoletz, Mirta Acuña de Baravalle, Berta Braverman

Website | madres.org

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo is an Argentine human rights association formed in response to the National Reorganization Process, the military dictatorship by Jorge Rafael Videla, with the goal of finding the desaparecidos, initially, and then determining the culprits of crimes against humanity to promote their trial and sentencing.

The Mothers began demonstrating in the Plaza de Mayo, the public square located in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace, in the city of Buenos Aires, on April 30, 1977, to petition for the alive reappearance of their disappeared children. Originally, they would remain there seated, but by declaring state of emergency, police expelled them from the public square.

In September 1977, in order to provide themselves with an opportunity to share their stories with other Argentinians, the mothers decided to join the annual pilgrimage to Our Lady of Luján, located 30 miles outside Buenos Aires. In order to stand out among the crowds, the mothers decided to wear their children's nappies (diapers) as headscarves. Following the pilgrimage, the mothers decided to continue wearing these headscarves during their meetings and weekly demonstrations at the Plaza. On them, they embroidered the names of their children and wrote “Aparición con Vida” (Alive reappearance).

During the years of the Dirty war, the name used by the military junta in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 as a part of Operation Condor, military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA, or Triple A) hunted down political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism or the Montoneros guerrillero movement. The Mothers constantly opposed the de facto government and suffered persecution, including kidnappings and forced disappearancess, most notably in the cases of founders Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino, María Ponce de Bianco, and French nun supporters Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet, perpetrated by a group led by Alfredo Astiz, a former commander, intelligence officer, and naval commando who served in the Argentine Navy during the military dictatorship. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, known for having found and identified the remains of Che Guevara, would later find their bodies to have been killed on a death flight and their bodies disposed of in the sea.

On the first days of December, 1980, the first "March of Resistance" was held, consisting of marching around the public square for 24 hours.

Despite democracy being reestablished in the 1983 general election, the movement continued to hold marches and demonstrations, demanding sentences for the military personnel that participated in the government that overthrew Isabel Perón in the 1976 coup d'état. This would eventually culminate in the Trial of the Juntas of 1985.

They have received widespread support and recognition by many international organizations, including being the first organization laureated by the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and helped several human rights groups throughout their history. The 1980 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Adolfo Perez Esquivel was an active supporter of the association, for which he was the subject of harassment by the dictatorship.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are currently divided into two factions, the majority group "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association" (presided by Hebe de Bonafini) and "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo — Founding Line". Ceremonially, every Thursday at 3:30 p.m the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, led by Hebe de Bonafini, march around the May Pyramid at the central hub of the Plaza de Mayo, and at 4:00 p.m they give speeches from the Equestrian monument to General Manuel Belgrano, where they opine over the current national and global situation.

Purpose[edit]

Women had organized to gather, holding a vigil, while also trying to learn what had happened to their adult children during the 1970s and 1980s. They began to gather for this every Thursday, from 1977 at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace, in public defiance of the government's law against mass assemblies.[1] Wearing white headscarves to symbolize the diapers (nappies) of their lost children, embroidered with the names and dates of birth of their offspring, now young adults, the mothers marched in twos in solidarity to protest the denials of their children's existence or their mistreatment by the military regime.[1] Despite personal risks, they wanted to hold the government accountable for the human rights violations which were committed in the Dirty War.[2]

Activism and reaction[edit]

The white shawl of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, painted on the floor in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo were the first major group to organize against the Argentina regime's human rights violations. Together, the women created a dynamic and unexpected force, which existed in opposition to traditional constraints on women in Latin America. These mothers came together to push for information on their own children and this highlighted the human rights violations and the scale of the protest drew press attention, raising awareness on a local and global scale. Their persistence to publicly remember and try to find their children, the sustained group organisation, the use of symbols and slogans, and the silent weekly protests attracted reactive measures from those in power.[1]

The military government considered these women to be politically subversive; the founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Azucena Villaflor De Vincenti, who placed the names of 'the missing' in a newspaper in December 1977 (on International Human Rights Day) was kidnapped, tortured and murdered (later found to have been killed on a 'death flight' and her body disposed of in the sea),[1] along with French nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet who also supported the movement. This was done at the command of Alfredo Astiz and Jorge Rafael Videla (who was a senior commander in the Argentine Army and dictator of Argentina from 1976 to 1981), both of whom were later sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the repression of dissidents during the Dirty War.[3]

Esther Ballestrino and María Ponce de Bianco, two other founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, also "disappeared".

In 1983, former military officers began to reveal information about some of the regime's human rights violations. Eventually, the military has admitted that over 9,000 of those abducted are still unaccounted for, but the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo say that the number of missing is closer to 30,000. Most are presumed dead. Many of these prisoners were high school students, young professionals, and union workers who were suspected of having opposed the government. Those 'taken' were generally below the age of 35, as were the members of the regime who tortured and murdered them. There were a disproportionate number of Jewish "disappeared" as the military was anti-Semitic, as documented in Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. This documented the testimony of Jacobo Timerman and his experience being arrested and tortured during this time.[4][5] .

It took until 2005 and DNA identification for many of the mass graves and human remains to be exhumed and cremated or buried, Azecuna's ashes were interred in the Plaza de Mayo itself.[1]

Today, the Mothers are engaged in the struggle for human, political, and civil rights in Latin America and elsewhere.[3]

Graffiti on a metal plate in Plaza Montenegro, San Martín St. & San Luis St., Rosario, Argentina. (victims of forced disappearance of the last military dictatorship, 1976-1983) and the alleged assassination of Pocho Lepratti, a social activist, by the Santa Fe provincial police. The white hood on top is the symbol of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The text reads "30 MIL POCHOS VIVEN" = "30,000 Pochos live", a reference to the estimate of 30,000 "disappeared" victims of the military junta.

Origins of the movement[edit]

On April 30, 1977, Azucena Villaflor de De Vincenti and a dozen other mothers walked to the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina's capital city.

The original founders of the group were Azucena Villaflor de De Vincenti, Berta Braverman, Haydée García Buelas; María Adela Gard de Antokoletz, Julia, María Mercedes and Cándida Gard (four sisters); Delicia González, Pepa Noia, Mirta Acuña de Baravalle,[6] Kety Neuhaus, Raquel Arcushin, and Senora De Caimi.

When the disappearances began, each mother thought that their child's disappearance was a single unique case. Initially, the lack of media attention on the disappearances led the mothers to believe that they were alone in their plight. As each mother visited prisons, hospitals, and police stations searching for their children, they each began to notice other mothers who were also searching for their children. The women began to realize that these disappearances were systematic, organized, and planned. Most of the women came from traditional working-class backgrounds and had limited knowledge of political processes. These women banded together to confront the regime as a unified front of mothers seeking answers about their missing children. [7]

These women shared the experience of each having had at least one child who had been 'taken' by the military government. The mothers declared that between 1970 and 1980, more than 30,000 individuals became "Desaparecidos" or "the disappeared." These people were erased from public records with no government traces of arrests or evidence of charges against them.[8]

The women decided to risk a public protest, although gatherings of more than three people were banned, by linking arms in pairs, as if on a stroll[1] just across the street from the presidential office building, the Casa Rosada (the Pink House). The mothers chose this site for its high visibility, and they were hoping for information on their whereabouts to recover imprisoned or to properly bury their children.

The "disappeared" were believed to have been abducted by agents of the Argentine government during the years known as the Dirty War (1976–1983). Those whose locations were found, often had been tortured and killed and bodies disposed of in rural areas or unmarked graves.[8]

Becoming a movement[edit]

As growing numbers joined weekly marches on Thursdays, the day the first few met,[1] the Mothers also began an international campaign to defy the propaganda distributed by the military regime. This campaign brought the attention of the world to Argentina.[9]

A policeman (Carlos Gallone[10]) and a Mother during an act of protest at Plaza de Mayo, October 1982

One year after the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo was founded, hundreds of women were participating, gathering in the Plaza for weekly demonstrations. They found strength in each other by marching in public, and attracted some press. They made signs with photos of their children and publicized their children's names. They wore white headscarves embroidered with the names and dates of births of their lost children.[1]

The government tried to trivialize their action calling them "las locas" (the madwomen).[11]

As the number of disappeared grew, the movement grew, and the Mothers were getting international attention. They began to try to build pressure from outside governments against the Argentine dictatorship, by sharing the many stories of the "disappeared".

On 10 December 1977, International Human Rights Day, the Mothers published a newspaper advertisement with the names of their missing children. That same night, Azucena Villaflor (one of the original founders) was kidnapped from her home in Avellaneda by a group of armed men. She is reported to have been taken to the infamous ESMA torture centre, and from there on a "death flight" over the ocean. In-flight, the abducted were drugged, stripped, and flung into the sea or killed and thrown overboard.[12][1]

Also an estimated 500 of the missing are the children who were born in concentration camps or prison to pregnant 'disappeared' women; many of these babies were given in illegal adoptions to military families and others associated with the regime. Their birth mothers were generally believed to have been killed. The numbers are hard to determine due to the secrecy surrounding the abductions.[13]

Global impact[edit]

In 1978, when Argentina hosted the World Cup, the Mothers' demonstrations at the Plaza were covered by the international press in town for the sporting event.[11]

Later when Adolfo Scilingo spoke at the National Commission on Disappeared People, he described how many prisoners were drugged and thrown out of planes to their deaths in the Atlantic Ocean. For years following the regime, from early 1978 onwards, residents who lived along the Río de la Plata have found human remains of those abducted, murdered and dumped at sea.[13]

Some of the movement's most prominent supporters bodies were never found, such as French national Léonie Duquet. Duquet and her sister Alice Domon, both French nuns, were taken during the Dirty War. Their disappearance attracted international attention and outrage, with demands for a United Nations investigation of human rights abuses in the country. France demanded information on the sisters, but the Argentine government denied all responsibility for them.[14]

In 2005, forensic anthropologists dug up some remains of bodies that had been buried in an unmarked grave after washing ashore (in late December 1977) near the beach resort of Santa Teresita, south of Buenos Aires. DNA testing identified among them Azucena Villaflor, Esther Careaga and María Eugenia Bianco, three pioneer Mothers of the Plaza who had "disappeared". In December 2005, Azucena Villaflor's ashes were buried in the Plaza de Mayo itself.[15][1]

Divisions and radicalization[edit]

The mothers with President Néstor Kirchner

Never giving up their pressure on the regime, after the military gave up its authority to a civilian government in 1983, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo rekindled hopes that they might learn the fates of their children, pushing again for information.[16]

Beginning in 1984, teams assisted by the American geneticist Mary-Claire King began to use DNA testing to identify remains, when bodies of the "disappeared" were found.

The government then conducted a national commission to collect testimony about the "disappeared", hearing from hundreds of witnesses. In 1985, it began prosecution of men indicted for crimes, beginning with the Trial of the Juntas, in which several high-ranking military officers were convicted and sentenced.

The military threatened a coup to prevent a widening of prosecutions. In 1986, Congress passed Ley de Punto Final, which stopped the prosecutions for some years.

But in 2003, Congress repealed the Pardon Laws, and in 2005 the Argentine Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. During the Kirchner's administration, prosecution of war crimes were re-opened. Former high-ranking military and security officers have been convicted and sentenced in new cases. Among the charges is the stealing of babies of the disappeared. The first major figure, Miguel Etchecolatz, was convicted and sentenced in 2006. Most of the members of the Junta were imprisoned for crimes against humanity.[17]

With the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group set up in 1977, the Mothers have identified 256 missing children who were adopted soon after being born to mothers in prison or camps who later "disappeared". Seven of the identified children have died. At beginning of 2018, 137 of those children, now grown adults, were found and were offered to meet their biological families.[18] Some Mothers and Grandmothers suffered disappointments when the grandchildren, now adults, did not want to know their hidden history, or refused to be tested. Parents who were judged in court to be guilty of adopting – or "appropriating" – the children of the disappeared, while knowing the truth about their origins, were susceptible to imprisonment.[19]

In 1986, the Mothers split into two factions. One group, called the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo-Founding Line, focused on legislation, the recovery of the remains of their children, and bringing ex-officials to justice. Hebe de Bonafini continued to lead a more radical faction under the name Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association. These mothers felt responsible for carrying on their children's political work and assumed the agenda that originally led to the disappearance of the dissidents. Unlike the Founding Line, the association refused government help or compensation. They pledged not to recognize the deaths of their children until the government would admit its fault.[20]

A scholar of the movement, Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, wrote that the association faction wanted "a complete transformation of Argentine political culture" and "envisions a socialist system free of the domination of special interests". The Mothers Association is now backed by younger militants who support socialism.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, Bonafini said "I was happy when I first heard the news, that for once they were the ones attacked, I'm not going to lie." and "being the U.S.A the most terrorist of all countries, throwing bombs everywhere around the world" but "felt bad for the innocent workers dead (because of the terrorist attack)" Her remarks led to some understandable criticisms in mainstream media.[21][22]

Speaking for the Mothers, she rejected the investigations of alleged Iranian involvement in the 1994 AMIA Bombing (the terrorist attack on the AMIA Jewish community center), saying the CIA and Mossad were misleading the investigation; making a statement that they repudiate "the tragic attack, but respect for the victims and their families requires to investigate and do justice," without being "politically manipulated in the service of US interests."[23]

'Final' March of Resistance[edit]

The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo march in October 2006

On 26 January 2006, members of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo Association faction announced what they said was their final annual March of Resistance at the Plaza de Mayo, saying "the enemy isn't in the Government House anymore."[24] They acknowledged the significance of President Néstor Kirchner's success in having the Full Stop Law (Ley de Punto Final) and the Law of Due Obedience repealed and declared unconstitutional.[25] They said they would continue weekly Thursday marches in pursuit of action on other social causes.

The Founding Line faction announced that it would continue both the Thursday marches and the annual marches to commemorate the long struggle of resistance to the dictatorship.

Social involvement and political controversies[edit]

The association faction remained close to Kirchnerism. They established a newspaper (La Voz de las Madres), a radio station, and a university (Popular University of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo).[26]

The association at one time managed a federally funded housing program, Sueños Compartidos ("Shared Dreams"), which it founded in 2008.[27] By 2011, Sueños Compartidos had completed 5,600 housing units earmarked for slum residents, and numerous other facilities in six provinces and the city of Buenos Aires.[28][29]

Its growing budgets, which totaled around US$300 million allocated between 2008 and 2011 (of which $190 million had been spent), came under scrutiny. There was controversy when the chief financial officer of Sueños Compartidos, Sergio Schoklender, and his brother Pablo (the firm's attorney) were alleged to have embezzled funds.[29] The Schoklender brothers had been convicted in 1981 for the murder of their parents and served 15 years in prison. After gaining Bonafini's confidence, they were managing the project's finances with little oversight from the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo or the program's licensor, the Secretary of Public Works. Their friendship with the association ended in June 2011 after Bonafini learned of irregularities in their handling of the group's finances.[30] Following an investigation ordered by Federal Judge Norberto Oyarbide, the Secretary of Public Works canceled the Sueños Compartidos contract in August 2011. The outstanding projects were transferred to the Undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development.[31]

Gender and motherhood[edit]

Issues of gender and motherhood were embedded in this movement.[32] From its inception, the Mothers have been a strictly women-only organization,[33] as the mothers who lost their children were asserting their existence in the embroidery scarves, posters and demands for restoration.[1] In the later political movement, the women felt it had to be women-only partly to ensure their voices and actions would not be lost in a male-dominated movement, and partly out of a belief that men would insist on a lengthy bureaucratic process rather than immediate action.[34] They also believed that women were more tireless and had more emotional strength than men.[35]

The gender separatism reaffirmed its status as a women's movement, although it also raised the question among some scholars of whether the movement truly challenged the notion of female passivity, and whether or not it would have sent a more powerful message to have had male family members involved as well.[33]

The Mothers movement also raised questions of women in political space and the boundaries surrounding that space.[33] The socially constructed gender roles prevalent in Argentine society restricted the arena of politics, political mobilisation, and confrontation to men.[36] When the Mothers entered the Plaza de Mayo, a public space with historical significance, they politicised their role as mothers in society and redefined the values associated with both politics and motherhood itself.[32] Although they did not challenge the patriarchal structure of Argentine society, by crossing boundaries into the masculinised political sphere, they expanded spaces of representation for Argentine women and opened the way for new forms of civic participation.[36]

The Mothers were committed to child-centred politics, symbolised by the white scarves they wore on their heads.[37] The scarves were originally nappies, or to represent diapers, and were embroidered with the names of their disappeared children or relatives.[37][1] These headscarves identified the Mothers and symbolised children, and thus life, as well as hope and maternal care.[37] The colour white also symbolised their refusal to wear a black mantilla and go into mourning.[33] Children were at the heart of the movement, as the Mothers fought for a system that would respect human life and honour its preservation.[37]

Santa Fe commemoration of 2000 rounds of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, 2016

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo politicised and gave new value to the traditional role of mothers.[36] They used motherhood to frame their protest, demanding the rights inherent to their role: to conserve life.[36] They protested not only what had been done to their children, but also to themselves as mothers by taking them away.[36] The heart of the movement was always "women's feelings, mother's feelings", according to Hebe de Bonafini.[35] She further stated that "it was the strength of women, of mothers, that kept us going."[35] The women's identity as mothers did not restrict them from participating or making an impact in a masculinised political space.[36]

Their public protests contradicted the traditional, private domain of motherhood, and by mobilising themselves, they politicised their consciousness as women.[36] They restricted themselves to a conservative representation of motherhood, which avoided controversy and attracted the support of international media.[33] They refuted the concept that to be taken seriously or to be successful, a movement either has to be gender-neutral, or masculine: femininity and motherhood was integral to the Mothers' protest.[37]

Grandmothers[edit]

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Spanish: Asociación Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo) is an organization which has the aim of finding the "stolen" babies, whose mothers were killed during the Junta's dictatorship in 1977. Its president is Estela Barnes de Carlotto.[38] As of June 2019, their efforts have resulted in finding 130 grandchildren.[39]

Awards and prizes[edit]

In 1992, all members of the Mothers' association were awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

In 1997, María Adela Gard de Antokoletz was awarded the Gleitsman International Activist Award[40] by the Gleitsman Foundation.

In 1997, the organization was awarded the Geuzenpenning in Vlaardingen, Netherlands

In 1999, the organization was awarded the United Nations Prize for Peace Education.

On 10 December 2003, the Grandmothers' president, Estela Barnes de Carlotto, was awarded the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.

Representation in other media[edit]

The Official Story is a film related to the "stolen babies" cases.

Cautiva is another film related to the "stolen babies" cases.

An opera entitled Las Madres de la Plaza (2008) premiered in Leffler Chapel at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. It was written in a collaboration of students, staff, and faculty of the school, headed up by James Haines and John Rohrkemper.

In an episode of Destinos set in Argentina, protagonist Raquel is told about the Mothers of the Plaza and sees a portion of a march.

On "Little Steven" Van Zandt's 1984 release, "Voice of America", he pays tribute to Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo with his song, "Los Desaparecidos".

Rock band U2 wrote a song, "Mothers of the Disappeared", inspired by, and in tribute to, their cause. The song appeared on their 1987 album The Joshua Tree.

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (Spanish: Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo) is a 1985 Argentine documentary film directed by Susana Blaustein Muñoz and Lourdes Portillo about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The documentary Los Desaparecidos (The Disappeared, 2008) relives the horrors of Argentina’s Dirty War. The film follows follows a child of the disappeared and his involvement in Los Madres is touched on throughout the documentary.

See also[edit]

Black Sash

Films depicting Latin American military dictatorships

Ladies in White

Maria Eugenia Sampallo

Mourning Mothers

Saturday Mothers

Tiananmen Mothers

Women in Black

Jorge Rafael Videla

Estela de Carlotto

Laura Carlotto

Alice Domon

Léonie Duquet

Alfredo Astiz

References[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Hunter, Clare (2019). Threads of life : a history of the world through the eye of a needle. London: Sceptre (Hodder & Stoughton). pp. 157–159. ISBN 9781473687912. OCLC 1079199690.

2. ^ Meade, Teresa A. (2016-01-19). A history of modern Latin America : 1800 to the present (Second ed.). Chichester, West Sussex. ISBN 9781118772485. OCLC 915135785.

3. ^ a b [1]. University of Denver, Case Specific Briefing Paper, "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo: First Responders for Human Rights", 2011. Accessed: May 4, 2015.

4. ^ Stover, Eric; Timerman, Jacobo; Talbot, Tolby (1982). "Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number". Human Rights Quarterly. 4 (2): 299. doi:10.2307/762134. ISSN 0275-0392. JSTOR 762134.

5. ^ Meade, Teresa A. (2016-01-19). A history of modern Latin America : 1800 to the present (Second ed.). Chichester, West Sussex. ISBN 9781118772485. OCLC 915135785.

6. ^ "Testimonio de Mirta Acuña de Baravalle / 09 de mayo 2012". Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno (in Spanish). 2012-05-09. Retrieved 2020-02-11.

7. ^ McFarland, Sam (2018) "Azucena Villaflor, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and Struggle to End Disappearances," International Journal of Leadership and Change: Vol. 6 : Iss. 1 , Article 7.

8. ^ a b Meade, Teresa A. (2016-01-19). A history of modern Latin America : 1800 to the present (Second ed.). Chichester, West Sussex. ISBN 9781118772485. OCLC 915135785.

9. ^ [2]. "Purdue University Press", article, "Textual Strategies to Resist Disappearance and the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo", 2007. Accessed: May 4, 2015.

10. ^ "Página/12 :: El país :: Gallone le echó la culpa a la foto". www.pagina12.com.ar (in Spanish). Retrieved 2019-12-05.

11. ^ a b Lester Kurtz. "Movements and Campaigns", Nonviolent Conflict website, N.p., n.d. Web. 16 December 2012

12. ^ [3]. "Gariwo", article, "Azucena Villaflor: A Mother of the Plaza de Mayo". Accessed: May 4, 2015.

13. ^ a b Meade, Teresa A. (2016-01-19). A history of modern Latin America : 1800 to the present (Second ed.). Chichester, West Sussex. ISBN 9781118772485. OCLC 915135785.

14. ^ Durham, Robert B. (2014). False Flags, Covert Operations, & Propaganda. lulu.com. p. 96. ISBN 978-1312462885.

15. ^ [4]. Los Angeles Times, article, "Argentines Remember a Mother Who Joined the 'Disappeared' ", 24 March 2006. Accessed: May 4, 2015.

16. ^ [5]. "JSTOR", article, "Argentina's Mothers of Plaza de Mayo: The Mourning Process from Junta to Democracy", 1987. Accessed: May 4, 2015.

17. ^ [6]. "comisionjuiciocampodemayo.wordpress.com", article, "Listado de condenados por delitos de lesa humanidad", March 19, 2012. Accessed: February 7, 2018.

18. ^ [7]. "[8]", article, "La nieta recuperada 127 es la hija de la mendocina María del Carmen Moyano", December 28, 2017. Accessed: February 7, 2018.

19. ^ [9]. "The New Yorker", article, "Children of the Dirty Way", March 19, 2012. Accessed: May 4, 2015.

20. ^ [10]. "The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace", Volume 2, "Early Christianity and Antimilitarism - Mass Violence and Trends", 2010. Accessed: May 4, 2015.

21. ^ "nacionpro.com: "El día que Bonafini se alegró por los atentados a las torres gemelas"". nacionpro.com. Archived from the original on 2018-08-02. Retrieved 2018-02-07.

22. ^ "Aldo Marchesi: Old Ideas in New Discourses". Ssrc.org. 2001-11-26. Archived from the original on 2009-03-02. Retrieved 2012-03-01.

23. ^ "Página/12 :: El país :: "Se escucha sólo a una parte"". Pagina12.com.ar. Retrieved 2012-03-01.

24. ^ DyN, EFE (news agencies) (26 January 2006). "Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo realizaron la última Marcha de la Resistencia". Clarin. Retrieved March 28, 2011.

25. ^ "Bonafini anunció que las Madres harán la última Marcha de la Resistencia". El Pais. Edant. 14 January 2006. Retrieved 2012-03-01.

26. ^ "Hebe de Bonafini S.A.: Cuando el dolor sirve para ganar dinero y poder". Patagones Noticias.[permanent dead link]

27. ^ "Página/12 - Las Madres y su construcción de sueños". Pagina12.com.ar. Retrieved 2012-03-01.

28. ^ "Podrían denunciar plan de viviendas de Madres de Plaza de Mayo". El Intransigente.

29. ^ a b "Les quitan a las madres el manejo del plan de viviendas". La Nación. Archived from the original on 2011-10-09.

30. ^ "Bonafini says Schoklenders are 'scammers, traitors'". Buenos Aires Herald.

31. ^ "Bonafini says Schoklenders are 'scammers, traitors". Buenos Aires Herald.

32. ^ a b Bosco, Fernando J. (2006). "The Madres De Plaza De Mayo and Three Decades of Human Rights' Activism: Embeddedness, Emotions, and Social Movements". Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 96 (2): 342–65. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00481.x. S2CID 145446463.

33. ^ a b c d e Shepherd, Laura J. (2015). Gender matters in global politics: a feminist introduction to international relations (2 ed.). London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 29–31.

34. ^ Krause, Wanda C. (2004). "The Role and Example of Chilean and Argentinian Mothers in Democratisation". Development in Practice. 14 (3): 366–380. doi:10.1080/0961452042000191204. S2CID 144459929.

35. ^ a b c Sternbach, Nancy Saporta; et al. (1987). "Interview with Hebe De Bonafini: President of Las Madres De Plaza De Mayo". Feminist Teacher. 3 (1): 16–21.

36. ^ a b c d e f g Bellucci, Mabel (1999). "Childless Motherhood: Interview with Nora Cortiñas, a Mother of the Plaza De Mayo, Argentina". Reproductive Health Matters. 7 (13): 83–88. doi:10.1016/s0968-8080(99)90116-7.

37. ^ a b c d e Krause, Wanda C. "The Role and Example of Chilean and Argentinian Mothers in Democratisation." Development in Practice, vol. 14, no. 3, 2004, pp. 366–380. JSTOR.

38. ^ http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/03/20123281047161699. Retrieved April 2, 2012. [dead link]

39. ^ "Buenos Aires Times | Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo identify 130th missing grandchild of long search". www.batimes.com.ar. Retrieved 2019-06-13.

40. ^ "Gleitsman International Activist Award". Center for Public Leadership. Archived from the original on 2012-03-01. Retrieved 2012-03-01.

Further reading[edit]

Mothers of the Disappeared, by Jo Fisher (1989).

Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, by Marguerite Guzman Bouvard (1994).

Circle of Love Over Death: Testimonies of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, by Matilde Mellibovsky, trans. by Maria & Matthew Proser (1997).

Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza De Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina, by Rita Arditti (1999).

A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, by Marguerite Feitlowitz (1998)

"Las cenizas de Azucena, junto a la Pirámide", Página/12, 9 December 2005 (in Spanish).

"Claiming the Public Space: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo." by Susan Torre. In The Sex of Architecture, edited by Diana Agrest, Patricia Conway, and Lesile Weisman, 241–250. New York: Harry N. Adams, 1996.

External links[edit]

(in Spanish) Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo

(in Spanish) Madres de Plaza de Mayo – Línea Fundadora

(in English) Asociación Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo

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Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo - Wikipedia

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Cultural Equality (Haitian)

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Solange Pierre (4 July 1963 - 4 December 2011), known as Sonia Pierre, was a human rights advocate in the Dominican Republic who worked to end antihaitianismo , which is discrimination against individuals of Haitian origin either born in Haiti or in the Dominican Republic. For this work, she won the 2006 Robert F.

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Racial Equality

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Gender Equality

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Benazir Bhutto became the first female prime minister of Pakistan in 1988. She was killed by a suicide bomber in 2007.

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Cultural stereotypes (Dominican)

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Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. She rose to prominence with the novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and Yo! (1997).

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Gender Equality

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Quick Facts
"The art of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters.""Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry."

Name

Gloria Steinem

Birth Date

March 25, 1934 (age 86)

Education

Smith College

Place of Birth

Toledo, Ohio

Zodiac Sign

Aries

Social activist, writer, editor and lecturer Gloria Steinem has been an outspoken champion of women's rights since the 1960s.

Who Is Gloria Steinem?

Gloria Steinem became a freelance writer after college and grew more and more engaged in the women's movement and feminism. She helped create both New York and Ms. magazines, helped form the National Women's Political Caucus, and is the author of many books and essays.

Early Life

Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio. Since the late 1960s, Steinem has been an outspoken champion of women's rights. She had an unusual upbringing, spending part of the year in Michigan and the winters in Florida or California. With all this traveling, Steinem did not attend school on a regular basis until she was 11.

Around this time, Steinem's parents divorced and she ended up caring for her mother, Ruth, who suffered from mental illness. Steinem spent six years living with her mother in a rundown home in Toledo before leaving to go to college. At Smith College, she studied government, an non-traditional choice for a woman at that time. It was clear early on that she did not want to follow the most common life path for women in those days-marriage and motherhood. "In the 1950s, once you married you became what your husband was, so it seemed like the last choice you'd ever have...I'd already been the very small parent of a very big child-my mother. I didn't want to end up taking care of someone else," she later told People magazine.

Pioneering Feminist

After finishing her degree in 1956, Steinem received a fellowship to study in India. She first worked for Independent Research Service and then established a career for herself as a freelance writer. One of her most famous articles from the time was a 1963 expose on New York City's Playboy Club for Show magazine. Steinem went undercover for the piece, working as a waitress, or a scantily clad "bunny" as they called them, at the club. In the late 1960s, she helped create New York magazine, and wrote a column on politics for the publication. Steinem became more engaged in the women's movement after reporting on an abortion hearing given by the radical feminist group known as the Redstockings. She expressed her feminist views in such essays as "After Black Power, Women's Liberation."

In 1971, Steinem joined other prominent feminists, such as Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan, in forming the National Women's Political Caucus, which worked on behalf of women's issues. She also took the lead in launching the pioneering, feminist Ms magazine. It began as an insert in New York magazine in December 1971; its first independent issue appeared in January 1972. Under her direction, the magazine tackled important topics, including domestic violence. Ms. became the first national publication to feature the subject on its cover in 1976.

As her public profile continued to rise, Steinem faced criticism from some feminists, including the Redstockings, for her association with the CIA-backed Independent Research Service. Others questioned her commitment to the feminist movement because of her glamorous image. Undeterred, Steinem continued on her own way, speaking out, lecturing widely, and organizing various women's functions. She also wrote extensively on women's issues. Her 1983 collection of essays, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, featured works on a broad range of topics from "The Importance of Work" to "The Politics of Food."

Impact and Criticism

In 1986, Steinem faced a very personal challenge when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was able to beat the disease with treatment. That same year, Steinem explored one of America's most iconic women in the book Marilyn: Norma Jean. She became a consulting editor at Ms magazine the following year after the publication was sold to an Australian company.

Steinem found herself the subject of media scrutiny with her 1992 book Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem. To some feminists, the book's focus on personal development seemed to be a retreat from social activism. Steinem was surprised by the backlash, believing that a strong self-image to be crucial to creating change. "We need to be long-distance runners to make a real social revolution. And you can't be a long-distance runner unless you have some inner strength," she explained to People magazine. She considers the work to be "most political thing I've written. I was saying that many institutions are designed to undermine our self-authority in order to get us to obey their authority," she told Interview magazine.

Steinem had another collection of writings, Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender, published in 1994. In one of the essays, "Doing Sixty," she reflected on reaching that chronological milestone. Steinem was also the subject of a biography written by another noted feminist Carolyn G. Heilbrun entitled Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem.

Personal Life

In 2000, Steinem did something that she had insisted for years that she would not do. Despite being known for saying that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, Steinem decided to get married. She wed David Bale, an environmental and animal rights activist and the father of actor Christian Bale. At the age of 66, Steinem proved that she was still unpredictable and committed to charting her own path in life. Her wedding raised eyebrows in certain circles. But the union did not last long. Bale died of brain cancer in 2003. "He had the greatest heart of anyone I've known," Steinem told O magazine.

When Steinem turned 75 in 2009, the Ms. Foundation suggested ways for others to celebrate Steinem's birthday. It called on women to engage in outrageous acts for simple justice. Around this time, Steinem discussed some of the pressing issues of the day. "We've demonstrated that women can do what men do, but not yet that men can do what women do. That's why most women have two jobs-one inside the home and one outside it-which is impossible. The truth is that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it," Steinem told the New York Daily News.

Steinem continues to work for social justice. As she recently said, "The idea of retiring is as foreign to me as the idea of hunting."

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"The art of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters." "Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry." Name Gloria Steinem Birth Date March 25, 1934 (age 86) Education Smith College Place of Birth Toledo, Ohio Zodiac Sign Aries Social activist, writer, editor and lecturer Gloria Steinem has been an outspoken champion of women's rights since the 1960s.

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Gender Equality

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Novelist and feminist campaigner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in 1977 to a middle-class Igbo family in Enugu, Nigeria. Her mother became the first female registrar at the University of Nigeria, while her father was a professor of statistics there. The fifth of six children, she lived what she describes as a 'very happy childhood, full of laughter and love, in a very close-knit family.'

Pressured by social and familial expectations, Adichie 'did what I was supposed to do' and began to study medicine at the University of Nigeria. After a year and a half, she decided to pursue her ambitions as a writer, dropped out of medical school and took up a communication scholarship in the US. From day one, she became alert to racial generalisations, having to address the 'story of catastrophe' perspective her American room-mate had of the entire African continent.

Leaving Nigeria made me much more aware of being Nigerian and what that meant. It also made me aware of race as a concept, because I didn't think of myself as black until I left Nigeria.

Adichie's three novels all focus on contemporary Nigerian culture, its political turbulence and at times, how it can intersect with the West. She published Purple Hibiscus in 2003, Half of a Yellow Sun in 2006 and Americanah in 2013. Each time, she manages to give any amateur a lesson in the recent history of Nigeria. Not simply the history one could peer into a dusty tome for, but one showing us the country's diverse cultures, its personal stories, its idioms, its futures.

Half of a Yellow Sun is set during the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967-1970) in which the Igbo people - an ethnic group of southern Nigeria - sought to establish an independent republic. Adichie chose three unlikely characters to narrate the story: a young houseboy, a woman professor and an English writer who identifies as Biafran. The reader is consequently required to assess narratives of class, gender, race and overall 'belonging' throughout. Criticism of Western colonialism and its aftershocks are demonstrated through the conflicted white journalist Richard. He laments to Western journalists that 'one hundred dead black people equal one dead person' and is later urged to write about the war because '[the West] will take what you write more seriously because you are white.' This makes a powerful critique of the stories we listen to and why. Adichie herself commented that 'I wanted to make a strongly-felt political point about who should be writing the stories of Africa.'

Although her novels and wider writings are the best window into Adichie's incisive and emotive imagination, she has delivered several impressive talks that get to the heart of their subject. They broadly encompass race and gender, and our tendency to accept what we are taught without recognising ingrained prejudice. Her 2009 lecture, The Danger of a Single Story, is a brilliant discussion of race, but her argument is cleverly applicable across much broader contexts. This is where she spoke of her room-mate in the US having a preconceived idea of who she, a Nigerian, would be: 'In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her [the room-mate] in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.' In this lecture, her discussion of US perceptions of Mexicans as the 'abject immigrant' during the early 2000s, could just as easily be transferred to our current hysteria about Syrian refugees entering Europe.

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Adichie's 2013 lecture We Should All Be Feminists discusses the damaging paradigms of femininity and masculinity. 'We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, "You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you would threaten the man."'

Adichie argues that Feminism should not be an 'elite little cult' but a 'party full of different feminisms.' It feels a particularly important message to take to heart - we are imperfect, we are attempting to unlearn what we have unconsciously learned and simultaneously discovering new ways of seeing. As she notes so beautifully, 'Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanise. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.'

References include: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,. 'The Story Behind The Book | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie', Chimamanda.com, Ted.com, YouTube. ©The Heroine Collective 2015 - Present, All Rights Reserved.

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BIOGRAPHY: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Writer, Feminist - The Heroine Collective

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Novelist and feminist campaigner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in 1977 to a middle-class Igbo family in Enugu, Nigeria. Her mother became the first female registrar at the University of Nigeria, while her father was a professor of statistics there. The fifth of six children, she lived what she describes as a 'very happy childhood, ...

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Racial Equality

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(Photo: Courtesy John Lewis)

Quick Facts
"When I was growing up, my mother and father and family members said, 'Don't get in trouble. Don't get in the way.' I got in trouble. I got in the way. It was necessary trouble.""Second-class citizenship is not citizenship at all.""Courage is a reflection of the heart-it is a reflection of something deep within the man or woman or even a child who must resist and must defy an authority that is morally wrong. Courage makes us march on despite fear and doubt on the road toward justice. Courage is not heroic but as necessary as birds need wings to fly. Courage is not rooted in reason but rather Courage comes from a divine purpose to make things right.""People around the world will not be inspired by our missiles and our guns; they will be inspired by our ideas.""I have not accomplished everything I wanted to. I would like to, before I leave this little piece of real estate, do a little more for the cause of peace. To end the violence here at home and violence abroad. We spend so much of our resources killing each other.""We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal. We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back.""When Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, he helped free and liberate all of us.""I disagree with the court that the history of discrimination is somehow irrelevant today. The record clearly demonstrates numerous attempts to impede voting rights still exist, and it does not matter that those attempts are not as 'pervasive, widespread or rampant' as they were in 1965. One instance of discrimination is too much in a democracy.""Imagine that. I was beaten near to death at the Rock Hill Greyhound bus terminal during the Freedom Rides in 1961. Now the police chief is black.""We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about. In the struggle, we must seek more than civil rights; we must work for the community of love, peace and true brotherhood. Our minds, souls and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all people.""I believe in nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living. I believe that this idea is one of those immutable principles that is nonnegotiable if you're going to create a world community at peace with itself.""I know maybe it won't happen in my lifetime, but I know somehow in some way we're going to create the Beloved Community, that we're going to create a national community, a world community that is at peace.""When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought-I never dreamed-of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected president of the United States."

Name

John Lewis

Birth Date

February 21, 1940 (age 80)

Did You Know?

During the civil rights struggle, Lewis was arrested approximately 40 times.

Did You Know?

Lewis was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington in 1963.

Place of Birth

Near Troy, Alabama

Zodiac Sign

Pisces

One of the "Big Six" leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, John Lewis has continued to fight for people's rights since joining Congress in 1987.

Who Is John Lewis?

John Lewis grew up in an era of racial segregation. Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., he joined the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Lewis was a Freedom Rider, spoke at 1963's March on Washington and led the demonstration that became known as "Bloody Sunday." He was elected to Congress in 1986 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

Early Life

John Robert Lewis was born outside of Troy, Alabama, on February 21, 1940. Lewis had a happy childhood - though he needed to work hard to assist his sharecropper parents -but he chafed against the unfairness of segregation. He was particularly disappointed when the Supreme Court ruling in 1954's Brown v. The Board of Education didn't affect his school life. However, hearing Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermons and news of the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott inspired Lewis to act for the changes he wanted to see.

Civil Rights Struggle

In 1957, Lewis left Alabama to attend the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. There, he learned about nonviolent protest and helped to organize sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. He was arrested during these demonstrations, which upset his mother, but Lewis was committed to the Civil Rights Movement and went on to participate in the Freedom Rides of 1961.

Freedom Riders challenged the segregated facilities they encountered at interstate bus terminals in the South, which had been deemed illegal by the Supreme Court. It was dangerous work that resulted in arrests and beatings for many involved, including Lewis.

In 1963, Lewis became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. That same year, as one of the "Big Six" leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, he helped plan the March on Washington. Lewis-the youngest speaker at the event-had to alter his speech in order to please other organizers, but still delivered a powerful oration that declared, "We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about."

After the March on Washington, in 1964, the Civil Rights Act became law. However, this did not make it easier for African Americans to vote in the South. To bring attention to this struggle, Lewis and Hosea Williams led a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. After crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers were attacked by state troopers. Lewis was severely beaten once more, this time suffering a fractured skull.

The violent attacks were recorded and disseminated throughout the country, and the images proved too powerful to ignore. "Bloody Sunday," as the day was labeled, sped up the passage of 1965's Voting Rights Act.

Rep. John Lewis

Lewis left the SNCC in 1966. Though devastated by the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy in 1968, Lewis continued his work to enfranchise minorities. In 1970, he became director of the Voter Education Project. During his tenure, the VEP helped to register millions of minority voters.

Lewis ran for office himself in 1981, winning a seat on the Atlanta City Council. In 1986, he was elected to the House of Representatives. Today, representing Georgia's 5th District, he is one of the most respected members of Congress. Since entering office, he has called for healthcare reform, measures to fight poverty and improvements in education. Most importantly, he oversaw multiple renewals of the Voting Rights Act. When the Supreme Court struck down part of the law in 2013's Shelby County v. Holder, Lewis decried the decision as a "dagger into the heart" of voting rights.

In the wake of the mass shooting that took place on June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Florida, Lewis led a sit-in comprised of approximately 40 House Democrats on the floor of the House of Representatives on June 22nd in an attempt to bring attention and force Congress to address gun violence by taking definitive legislative action. "We have been too quiet for too long," Lewis said. "There comes a time when you have to say something. You have to make a little noise. You have to move your feet. This is the time."

The protest came just days after several measures including a bill regarding background checks and adding restrictions on the purchase of guns by people on the federal no-fly list, failed in the Senate. Senator Chris Murphy applauded the protest. Murphy had previously led a filibuster in the Senate which led to the subsequent vote.

Lewis also spoke out against the presidency of Donald Trump, who was elected on November 8, 2016. In an interview with Chuck Todd for NBC News' Meet the Press, which aired on January 15, 2017, Lewis said he didn't believe Trump was a "legitimate president" because of Russian interference in the election. "I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton," Lewis said in the interview. He also said he would not attend Trump's inauguration.

Trump John Lewis Tweet

Trump responded on Twitter, criticizing Lewis' work as a congressman and tweeting that Lewis was "All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!" The president-elect's attack on Lewis came just days before the Martin Luther King holiday, and prompted vocal support of the civil rights icon across social media. Several Democratic lawmakers also joined in support of Lewis, and boycotted Trump's inauguration.

Trump continued his war of words, tweeting: "John Lewis said about my inauguration, 'It will be the first one that I've missed.' WRONG (or lie)! He boycotted Bush 43 also because he...thought it would be hypocritical to attend Bush's swearing-in....he doesn't believe Bush is the true elected president. Sound familiar!"

A spokeswoman for Lewis confirmed that he had missed the inauguration of George W. Bush: "His absence at that time was also a form of dissent. He did not believe the outcome of that election, including the controversies around the results in Florida and the unprecedented intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, reflected a free, fair and open democratic process."

Cancer

In December 2019, Lewis announced that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Although he was "clear-eyed about the prognosis," Lewis said he felt encouraged that medical advancements had made this type of cancer treatable in many cases, adding that he intended to return to work as soon as possible.

Legacy

Though the Supreme Court's decision about the Voting Rights Act was a blow to Lewis, he has been encouraged by the progress that has occurred in his lifetime. After Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, Lewis stated that "When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought-I never dreamed-of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected president of the United States."

In addition to continuing his work in Congress, Lewis has reached out to a younger generation by helping to create a series of graphic novels about his work in the Civil Rights Movement. In 2016, he won the National Book Award for the third installment in the series March: Book Three, which marks the first time a graphic novel has received the honor.

He accepted the award with co-writer Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell and spoke of its significance in an emotional acceptance speech. "Some of you know I grew up in rural Alabama, very poor, very few books in our home," Lewis said. "I remember in 1956, when I was 16 years old, going to the public library to get library cards, and we were told the library was for whites only and not for coloreds. And to come here and receive this honor, it's too much."

He also spoke about the importance of books in his life. "I had a wonderful teacher in elementary school who told me: 'Read, my child, read', and I tried to read everything," he said. "I love books."

The civil rights icon has also been honored with numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the NAACP's Spingarn Medal and the sole John F. Kennedy "Profile in Courage Award" for Lifetime Achievement.

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"When I was growing up, my mother and father and family members said, 'Don't get in trouble. Don't get in the way.' I got in trouble. I got in the way. It was necessary trouble." "Second-class citizenship is not citizenship at all."

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Rights for Latinos

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Lin-Manuel Miranda, December 2017. Credit Credit Victoria Will for The New York Times

The unifying voice of the Obama years digs in for a fractious new era and a second child.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, December 2017. Credit Credit Victoria Will for The New York Times

Lin-Manuel Miranda was on summer break from college when he learned something about how New York was put together. He was working for a bilingual newspaper started by his father, covering an event called " Salsa, Blues and Shamrocks." The event, put on by an Irish bar and restaurant in the Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights, was somewhat misnamed - it featured klezmer and merengue music as well.

For Mr. Miranda, then 20, it was a vision of New York's disparate cultures not battling one another but jamming side by side. The institutions that endured, he realized, were those that "embraced every wave of immigration that's come." Within a few decades, this vision would inform the work that thrust him on the world.

On a December morning in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Miranda, nursing a cold, reminisced about that summer, when he also discovered Morris-Jumel Mansion, the oldest house in New York, where Aaron Burr lived when he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. During the school year, Mr. Miranda had written and staged his first musical, " In the Heights," at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., and he had also moved into the Latino student house on campus, which gave him a new perspective on the layered worlds of New York and his own identity within them - part insider, part outsider looking in. Jumel Mansion, on Sugar Hill in Harlem, lay between Broadway and the two-story house in Inwood where Mr. Miranda grew up - with access to all those worlds but not bounded by any of them.

"You're in a different century for exactly one block, and then you go down the steps and there's a C-town, and you're back in 2017," Mr. Miranda said. "That's to me what makes New York great - it's all these things together at the same time. The feeling that you're on the train with the Wall Street guy and the mariachi bands. We're all in this thing together."

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At 37, Mr. Miranda can seem a fantasy of the Obama era, fulfilling the former president's promise to "bridge the divide between Red and Blue America," as Rolling Stone put it, and working the nation's differences as assets rather than battle lines. "Hamilton," a liberal romance about a conservative icon, invites audiences to play on multiple teams at once.

Now, in a more fractious climate, Mr. Miranda is getting ready for his next act. Fittingly, that is a break from the stage.

He and his wife, Vanessa Nadal, had their second child, Francisco, on Feb. 1, inspiring what USA Today declared "a perfect tweet ":

"Int. Hospital Room. Night. [The screams reach a delirious crescendo. FRANCISCO MIRANDA enters. He is 7 pounds and 13 ounces.] Intermission."

"I'm really looking forward to not going into rehearsal the next day," Mr. Miranda said in December. "Looking forward to camping out with my family, and hopefully starting some new writing projects. But at least for the first half of 2018 I'll be home."

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Mr. Miranda's journey through New York begins with that of his father, Luis A. Miranda, a political consultant who worked in Mayor Edward I. Koch's administration and founded the nonprofit Hispanic Federation.

The elder Mr. Miranda arrived in New York from Puerto Rico at age 18 with a college degree and limited English to attend graduate school at New York University. When he moved uptown to Inwood in 1981 after graduate school - he married a fellow student, Luz Towns, who is a clinical psychologist - the neighborhood "was not in good shape," Luis Miranda said.

"In fact, it was sort of the capital of murders in New York City. Crime was rampant. But we immediately fell in love with the neighborhood. It reminded me of my town in Puerto Rico, Vega Alta, where you get to know people and you get to know the small businesses around them."

Lin-Manuel, who was born in 1980, learned to juggle multiple identities early, spending his home life largely with the same nanny who had raised his father in Puerto Rico, and riding the yellow school bus to the elite Hunter College Elementary School on the Upper East Side. Inwood, for him, "was like a little Latin American country," a playland of bodegas and a vast park, albeit one where he occasionally found stolen car parts. Downtown, he said, was where he was "the one who can speak Spanish to everyone's nannies."

"I was code-switching between the two when I was 5 years old," he said. "I'm Lin-Manuel at home and Lin at school. I remember going to see white Santa Claus at Macy's and then seeing a darker Dominican Santa Claus on 176th Street at the community organization my parents volunteered at. That was my tale of two New Yorks."

At home, his father spoke to him in Spanish, his mother in English. The house was filled with politicians and relatives visiting from Puerto Rico, sometimes for long stretches.

Even as a boy, "he navigated both worlds very easily," the elder Mr. Miranda said.

Lin-Manuel's older sister, Luz, brought home hip-hop albums; his father loved Broadway musicals, including "West Side Story," which has been criticized for its largely stereotypical portrayals of Puerto Ricans. Lin-Manuel funneled both streams into the cassette tapes he swapped with friends.

"I was fortunate to grow up at a time when your currency was how good a mixtape you could make," he said. "You'd trade and it was, O.K., we're friends now, we made each other a mixtape."

Making the tapes was his first training for writing Broadway musicals, he said. "It's the best preparation," he said. "I'm creating 90 minutes of material for you, I'm shaping the sound. It's a rollercoaster of fast tempo, slow tempo. I can intercut bits of songs or comedy skits. I'm controlling the flow entirely, and you can't skip tracks. I'm creating an experience for you of how I feel or how I want you to feel."

Summers he worked for his father, canvassing door-to-door for candidates or writing music for political ads. "Not jingles," Lin-Manuel said. "But he'd say, 'I need 30 seconds of Latin jazz for a Sharpton ad,' or something for Elliot Spitzer," the short-tenured governor of New York.

One of his mixtape friends was Chris Hayes, who is now a host on MSNBC. Mr. Hayes rode the bus to Hunter from the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale, and acted in plays with Mr. Miranda. Mr. Miranda rattled off songs from a mixtape Mr. Hayes gave him in ninth grade, all political songs, from Bob Dylan to the hip-hop group Digable Planets. Mr. Hayes said he and Mr. Miranda both saw themselves as less privileged than many of their classmates, and saw the bus ride uptown as a "literal manifestation" of their apartness.

Years later, when Mr. Hayes saw a very early workshop of " Hamilton," still unfinished, he was struck by the parallels between the title character and the creator, he said. "Seeing Hamilton was an immigrant, he lives uptown, he's got this outer-borough-striver chip on his shoulder that Lin and I both had - like, I'm going to show these fancy people I belong - it felt so him," Mr. Hayes said.

For Mr. Miranda, Inwood is still home, and subways are still part of his travel diet. Last month he joined a successful campaign to save Coogan's, the Washington Heights Irish bar that celebrated shamrocks and salsa. "Always happy to rep uptown," he said. On this morning he was just back from London, where a production of "Hamilton" was starting, without him in the cast, and he was preparing to launch a toy drive for Puerto Rico. He has helped to raise more than $20 million for hurricane relief, and promised to bring "Hamilton" to Puerto Rico in 2019, with himself in the title role.

"Since Hurricane Maria, that kind of became my full-time job for a couple months," he said. Though many relatives have left the island, escaping either the hurricane or the economic collapse that preceded it, others were still there and without power, Luis Miranda said.

His son's advocacy for the island has drawn criticism from some Puerto Ricans, especially his 2016 support for an austerity debt relief bill called the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, or Promesa. The law created a financial control board for the island that was not accountable to the local government, and lowered the minimum wage to $4.25 for young workers. Provisions in the law have hindered recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria.

"I think his heart is in the right place," said David Galarza Santa, a labor spokesman and community activist. "But it's really difficult for me, because he became a poster child for this destructive law that would cause a lot of people to suffer. But seems like Maria slapped him back to reality."

Since the hurricane Mr. Miranda has argued for stronger supports for the island, without the austerity imposed by the Promesa. "The government and those bondholders need to treat this as a Hollywood studio," he said. "The movie didn't go - you made ' Pluto Nash.' They don't have your money. There is not one organization on the island that has the money. Austerity didn't work. They need to forgive the debt and move on."

Amid all this, he has starred in an upcoming film sequel to "Mary Poppins" and been a constant presence on Twitter, trading rap couplets with his two million followers and posting Spotify playlists, including a December compilation of instrumentals for students studying for final exams. His Twitter feed stands out as a relentlessly upbeat counterpoint to the grumbling that often fills the platform.

"Given the political climate we're in, globally, there's a lot of terrible things going on, and social media has been a way to highlight that," he said. "And that's very good. But I'm also very aware of being a corner that's capable of an occasional goofy joke or a video of my son singing a cute song. I appreciate when I see bright spots in my timeline, and I try to be that for other people.

"This year I tried to take weekends off. I delete Twitter from my phone on weekends. The worst thing you can give me is an audience in my pocket. That's not a good thing for a theater person."

But he has kept up a flow of "Hamilton"-related works, including monthly " Hamildrops" - free new songs or remixes posted to various streaming services. Last month's was a tart hip-hop remix of the song " Wrote My Way Out," from the 2016 " The Hamilton Mixtape " album.

As for the changed political climate around "Hamilton," Mr. Miranda said that was another theme explored in the show. The union that survives the title character at the show's end is as fractious as the one that buys tickets today. And even in the current era, politicians do not express their differences with pistols.

"Hamilton is outlived by his foes, almost every one of which becomes president," Mr. Miranda wrote in an email message. "Jefferson, Madison, Monroe (with whom he almost got in a duel), John Quincy Adams.

"We cannot control how the world reacts to our work. We can only control the work itself. So my show is embraced by one administration, not so much by the next."

History, after all, has room for both visions of America, and neither lasts forever.

"As Vonnegut put it, so it goes," Mr. Miranda wrote. "That's time."

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Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Next Lion of New York

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The unifying voice of the Obama years digs in for a fractious new era and a second child. Lin-Manuel Miranda, December 2017. Credit Credit Victoria Will for The New York Times Lin-Manuel Miranda was on summer break from college when he learned something about how New York was put together.

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Dis/Ability Rights

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Kitty Cone's final Facebook post is dated February 14, 2015. "Excellent explanation of dangers of fracking," she wrote above a Sierra Club video explaining the dirty energy process. Every Facebook Post on Kitty's page after that is an outpouring of love and support from friends and family near and far. It is a fitting social media ending for the life-long activist who died on March 21, 2015 at the age of 70.

With Kitty's death the world has lost a fighter for social justice and a woman of fierce commitment to progressive ideals and to equality in all it forms. Her family has lost a beloved member, her son Jorge a wonderful mother. I and countless others have lost a loyal, supportive, kind friend.
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I met Kitty Cone when I began working for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) in 1992. She was instrumental in my development as a disability rights lawyer. By example and through conversation she taught me about the corrosive affect of pity and the power of disability civil rights. And always with a smile and enthusiasm. She was friendly and unflaggingly supportive of my work and my efforts to balance motherhood with a demanding job in a non-profit.

And that support continued long after I left DREDF to open my law practice. We often had lunch together this time of year to coincide with our birthdays (Kitty would have turned 71 on April 7). Kitty was ever curious and enthusiastic about my work and my family. We had missed several years and I'm so grateful that last year we had a long visit between our birthdays.

Diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when she was 15, Cone is well known as a disability rights activist. She worked at three of the Bay Area's foundational disability rights organizations: The World Institute on Disability, the Berkeley Center for Independent Living, and DREDF. And in 1977 she was one of the key organizers behind the demonstrations protesting government delay in issuing regulations to give teeth to one of the country's first disability rights laws, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Cone, Judy Heumann, and others led the San Francisco disability community in a 28 day occupation of HEW offices in the San Francisco federal building. As recounted in Chapter 7 of The Activist's Handbook, 2d edition, the San Francisco sit in was a text book example of how to lead a successful protest, thanks in large part to Kitty Cone's organizing skills. Those 504 sit ins were a crucial step toward the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act celebrating its 25th anniversary this summer.

Kitty wrote about the experience in her Short History of the 504 Sit In, explaining its "historic importance:"

For the first time we had concrete federal civil rights protection. We had shown ourselves and the country through network TV that we, the most hidden, impoverished, pitied group of people in the nation were capable of waging a deadly serious struggle that brought about profound social change. The sit in was a truly transforming experience the likes of which most of us had never seen before or ever saw again. Those of us with disabilities were imbued with a new sense of pride, strength, community and confidence. For the first time, many of us felt proud of who we were. And we understood that our isolation and segregation stemmed from societal policy, not from some personal defects on our part and our experiences with segregation and discrimination were not just our own personal problems. Short History of the 504 Sit In

But as her final Facebook fracking post illustrates, disability rights work was just one facet of Kitty's progressive activism. The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley has an excellent oral history project recording the leaders of the disability rights and independent living movement, and thankfully Kitty's story is part of the project. Kitty's history was recorded during twelve interviews between 1996 and 1998; you can read Kitty Cone's oral history on the project's website. The transcript runs over 300 pages and spans Kitty's life, beginning with her 1944 birth in Illinois.

Any place you dip into Kitty's narrative you will find examples of a life dedicated to justice, fairness and equality. She attributed her lifelong commitment to racial equality to racism she saw first hand as she travelled in the south as a child with her black nanny. During college in 1964 she was very involved in Friends of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee [SNCC], raising money for bail for members arrested in the South and sponsoring the SNCC Freedom Singers to come and sing on the University of Illinois campus.

She protested segregation in Champaign, Illinois, getting arrested and garnering press coverage: "A number of us got arrested," Cone explains in her oral history. "I ended up getting a whole lot of news coverage because my grandfather had been the president of a bank there, and the family was very well known in Champaign."

And she protested the war in Viet Nam, and organized others to do the same. It was a war that turned her into a socialist:

I voted for Lyndon Johnson because I thought that he was-we were all very scared of Barry Goldwater, and Lyndon Johnson had-what was his famous quote about not sending American boys into-anyway, the big thing with Barry Goldwater was that he was going to bomb North Vietnam, that he was going to bomb Vietnam. And immediately after the election Lyndon Johnson started to bomb and escalated the war and sent lots of troops in. That was . . .the last time I voted for the Democratic party. Kitty Cone oral history

[I don't know whether Kitty voted for Barack Obama - her oral history was taken 10 years before his first election. I'm betting she did but would love to find out.]

And there was more. Kitty travelled in Latin and South America, and spent time in Nicaragua with the Organization of Disabled Revolutionaries. She was a political organizer in the South. And she wrote a novel with politically radical characters!

But life for Kitty was more than politics. In the early 1980's she went to Mexico with her then-partner Kathy Martinez to adopt her son Jorge, who was by her side when she died on Saturday. She loved opera and gardening and had a million friends and a close family. Kitty Cone made an enormous difference in the world. May her work and spirit and love continue to be a light to people everywhere.

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Kitty Cone, Progressive Activist and Disability Rights Leader, Dies at 70

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Kitty Cone's final Facebook post was dated February 14, 2015. "Excellent explanation of dangers of fracking," she wrote above a Sierra Club video explaining the dirty energy process. It was a fitting social media ending for the life long activist who died on March 21, 2015 at the age of 70.

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Racial Equality

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Ta-Nehisi Coates | Biography, Books, Between the World and Me, & Facts

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Ta-Nehisi Coates, in full Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, (born September 30, 1975, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.), American essayist, journalist, and writer who often explored contemporary race relations, perhaps most notably in his book Between the World and Me (2015), which won the National Book Award for no…

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Racial Equality

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Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, African-American novelist and poet most famous for authoring 'The Color Purple.'

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Environmental Activist

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Quick Facts
"Throughout my life, I have never stopped to strategize my next steps. I often just kept walking along, through whichever doors open.""Because I am focused on the solution, I don't see danger.""Giving up would have given pleasure to the enemy. So I never gave up."

Name

Wangari Maathai

Birth Date

April 1, 1940

Death Date

September 25, 2011

Education

Mount St. Scholastica College (Benedictine College), University of Pittsburgh, University of Nairobi

Place of Birth

Nyeri, Kenya

Place of Death

Nairobi, Kenya

AKA

Wangari Maathai

Full Name

Wangari Muta Maathai

Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan political and environmental activist and her country's assistant minister of environment, natural resources and wildlife.

Who Was Wangari Maathai?

In 1971, Wangari Maathai received a Ph.D., effectively becoming the first woman in either East or Central Africa to earn a doctorate. She was elected to Kenya's National Assembly in 2002 and has written several books and scholarly articles. She won the Nobel Peace Prize for her "holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights, and women's rights in particular."

Early Life and Education

Born on April 1, 1940, in Nyeri, Kenya, environmental activist Wangari Maathai grew up in a small village. Her father supported the family working as a tenant farmer. At this time, Kenya was still a British colony. Maathai's family decided to send her to school, which was uncommon for girls to be educated at this time. She started at a local primary school when she was 8 years old.

An excellent student, Maathai was able to continue her education at the Loreto Girls' High School. She won a scholarship in 1960 to go to college in the United States. Maathai attended Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas, where she earned a bachelor's degree in biology in 1964. Two years later, she completed a master's degree in biological sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. Maathai would later draw inspiration by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements in the United States.

Returning to Kenya, Maathai studied veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi. She made history in 1971, becoming the first woman in East Africa to earn a doctorate degree. Maathai joined the university's faculty and became the first woman to chair a university department in the region in 1976.

Green Belt Movement

Maathai sought to end the devastation of Kenya's forests and lands caused by development and remedy the negative impact that this development had on the country's environment. In 1977, she launched the Green Belt Movement to reforest her beloved country while helping the nation's women. "Women needed income and they needed resources because theirs were being depleted," Maathai explained to People magazine. "So we decided to solve both problems together."

Proving to be very successful, the movement is responsible for the planting of more than 30 million trees in Kenya and providing roughly 30,000 women with new skills and opportunities. Maathai also challenged the government on its development plans and its handling of the country's land. An outspoken critic of dictator Daniel arap Moi, she was beaten and arrested numerous times. One of her most famous actions was in 1989. Maathai and her organization staged a protest in Nairobi's Uhuru Park to prevent the construction of a skyscraper. Her campaign drew international attention, and the project was eventually dropped. The place in the park where she demonstrated became known as "Freedom Corner."

The following year, Maathai was beaten and badly injured at another protest in "Freedom Corner." She was calling for the release of political prisoners. What had started out as an environmental movement quickly became a political effort as well. "Nobody would have bothered me if all I did was to encourage women to plant trees," she later said, according to The Economist. But I started seeing the linkages between the problems that we were dealing with and the root causes of environmental degradation. And one of those root causes was misgovernance."

Internationally Acclaimed Activist

Maathai remained a vocal opponent of the Kenyan government until Moi's political party lost control in 2002. After several failed attempts, she finally earned a seat in the country's parliament that same year. Maathai soon was appointed assistant minister of environment, natural resources and wildlife. In 2004, she received a remarkable honor. Maathai was given the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace," according to the Nobel Foundation website.

In her Nobel speech, Maathai said that picking her for the renowned peace prize "challenged the world to broaden the understanding of peace: There can be no peace without equitable development; and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space." She also called for the release of fellow activist Aung San Suu Kyi in her talk.

Later Years and Death

Maathai shared her amazing life story with the world in the 2006 memoir Unbowed. In her final years, she battled ovarian cancer. She died on September 25, 2011, at the age of 71 years old. Maathai was survived by her three children: Waweru, Wanjira and Muta.

Former U.S. vice president and fellow environmentalist Al Gore was among those who offered remembrances of Maathai. "Wangari overcame incredible obstacles to devote her life to service-service to her children, to her constituents, to the women, and indeed all the people of Kenya-and to the world as a whole,'' according to The New York Times. She remains a potent example of how one person can be a force for change. As Maathai once wrote in her memoir, "What people see as fearlessness is really persistence."

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"Throughout my life, I have never stopped to strategize my next steps. I often just kept walking along, through whichever doors open." "Because I am focused on the solution, I don't see danger." "Giving up would have given pleasure to the enemy. So I never gave up."

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Immigration Rights

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In January 2017, six-year-old sparkplug Sophie Cruz took the stage alongside her parents and little sister at the Women's March on Washington to speak in defense of immigrants. In both English and Spanish, Cruz lit up the crowd with her call to make "a chain of love to protect our families."Cruz's powerful speech at the march drew national attention, but her fight for immigrant advocacy isn't new. The pint-sized activist first ran into our hearts when she ran into the middle of Pope Francis' Washington DC motorcade in 2015, at the tender age of five. The representation of God on Earth bent down from his Popemobile and embraced the child in his arms. A nice gesture, sure, but not what Cruz was there for. She had a message to deliver.

After the hug, she stuck by the car and made sure the Pope got his hands on a pro-immigration letter and a drawing she made of a smiling Pontiff holding hands with happy children, captioned: "My friends and I love each other no matter our skin color," reported the Washington Post.

Cruz lives in Los Angeles with her parents, both undocumented Mexican immigrants. She took up the cause for immigration reform after learning the family couldn't visit her grandfather in Mexico without facing trouble at the border. Not happy with that, she vowed to fix the problem.

To celebrate Cinco De Mayo 2016, she paid another visit to DC, this time to drop in on Barack Obama and be fêted as a "champion of immigration reform." But the real heart-clencher of the visit was her parents, who were forced to wait outside the White House because of their immigration status, the Post reported. (They did get leftover empanadas wrapped in White House napkins, though. So, there's that.)

As a young person directly affected by the country's immigration policy, Cruz's voice gives non-immigrants a much-needed perspective on the human impact of the issue. As a leader, she inspires other young girls to also make their voices heard. And as part of an embattled community, she reminds others like her that there is power in numbers.

"Let us fight with love, faith, and courage so that our families will not be destroyed," she said to her fellow children of undocumented immigrants at the Women's March. "I also want to tell the children not to be afraid, because we are not alone."

Fight on, Sophie.
This piece is part of our new project "Year in Women." Check out all the women featured:

(Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for SOZE)

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How Six-Year-Old Sophie Cruz Became the 2017 Face for Immigration Reform

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A digital media and commerce company that enables creativity through inspirational content and online classes.

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Gender Equality

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Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón ( 6 July 1907 - 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. She is also known for painting about her experience of chronic pain.

Early years

Born to a German father and a mother, Kahlo spent most of her childhood and adult life at La Casa Azul, her family home in Coyoacán - now publicly accessible as the Frida Kahlo Museum. Although she was disabled by polio as a child, Kahlo had been a promising student headed for medical school. Due to polio, Kahlo began school later than her peers. Along with her younger sister Cristina, she attended the local kindergarten and primary school in Coyoacán and was homeschooled for the fifth and sixth grades. While Cristina followed their sisters into a convent school, Kahlo was enrolled in a German school due to their father's wishes. She was soon expelled for disobedience.

Kahlo enjoyed art from an early age, receiving drawing instruction from printmaker Fernando Fernández (who was her father's friend) and filling notebooks with sketches.

A severe bus accident at the age of 18 left Kahlo in lifelong pain. Confined to bed for three months following the accident, Kahlo began to paint. She started to consider a career as a medical illustrator, as well, which would combine her interests in science and art.

Her mother provided her with a specially-made easel, which enabled her to paint in bed, and her father lent her some of his oil paints. She had a mirror placed above the easel, so that she could see herself. Painting became a way for Kahlo to explore questions of identity and existence. She explained, "I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best." She later stated that the accident and the isolating recovery period made her desire "to begin again, painting things just as [she] saw them with [her] own eyes and nothing more."

Most of the paintings Kahlo made during this time were portraits of herself, her sisters, and her schoolfriends.

In 1925, Kahlo began to work to help her family. She became a paid engraving apprentice for Fernández. He was impressed by her talent, although she did not consider art as a career at this time.

Kahlo spent the late 1920s and early 1930s travelling in Mexico and the United States withe her husband and fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera. During this time, she developed her artistic style, drawing her main inspiration from Mexican folk culture. She painted mostly small self-portraits that mixed elements from pre-Columbian and Catholic beliefs.

Her paintings raised the interest of surrealist artist André Breton, who arranged for Kahlo's first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938; the exhibition was a success and was followed by another in Paris in 1939. While the French exhibition was less successful, the Louvre purchased a painting from Kahlo, The Frame, making her the first Mexican artist to be featured in their collection. Throughout the 1940s, Kahlo participated in exhibitions in Mexico and the United States and worked as an art teacher. She taught at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (" La Esmeralda") and was a founding member of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana. Kahlo's always-fragile health began to decline in the same decade. She had her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1953, shortly before her death in 1954 at the age of 47.

Later years

Even as Kahlo was gaining recognition in Mexico, her health was declining rapidly, and an attempted surgery to support her spine failed. Her paintings from this period include Broken Column (1944), Without Hope (1945), Tree of Hope, Stand Fast (1946), and The Wounded Deer (1946), reflecting her poor physical state. During her last years, Kahlo was mostly confined to the Casa Azul. She painted mostly still lifes, portraying fruit and flowers with political symbols such as flags or doves.

Photographer Lola Alvarez Bravo understood that Kahlo did not have much longer to live, and thus staged her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galería Arte Contemporaneo in April 1953. Though Kahlo was initially not due to attend the opening, as her doctors had prescribed bed rest for her, she ordered her four-poster bed to be moved from her home to the gallery. To the surprise of the guests, she arrived in an ambulance and was carried on a stretcher to the bed, where she stayed for the duration of the party. The exhibition was a notable cultural event in Mexico and also received attention in mainstream press around the world. The same year, the Tate Gallery's exhibition on Mexican art in London featured five of her paintings.

In 1954, Kahlo was again hospitalized in April and May. That spring, she resumed painting after a one-year interval. Her last paintings include the political Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick (c. 1954) and Frida and Stalin (c. 1954) and the still-life Viva La Vida (1954).

Health issues and death

In 1950, Kahlo spent most of the year in Hospital ABC in Mexico City, where she underwent a new bone graft surgery on her spine. It caused a difficult infection and necessitated several follow-up surgeries. After being discharged, she was mostly confined to La Casa Azul, using a wheelchair and crutches to be ambulatory. During these final years of her life, Kahlo dedicated her time to political causes to the extent that her health allowed. She had rejoined the Mexican Communist Party in 1948 and campaigned for peace, for example, by collecting signatures for the Stockholm Appeal.

Kahlo's right leg was amputated at the knee due to gangrene in August 1953. She became severely depressed and anxious, and her dependency on painkillers escalated.

In her last days, Kahlo was mostly bedridden with bronchopneumonia, though she made a public appearance on 2 July 1954, participating with Rivera in a demonstration against the CIA invasion of Guatemala. She seemed to anticipate her death, as she spoke about it to visitors and drew skeletons and angels in her diary. The last drawing was a black angel, which biographer Hayden Herrera interprets as the Angel of Death. It was accompanied by the last words she wrote, "I joyfully await the exit - and I hope never to return - Frida" ("Espero Alegre la Salida - y Espero no Volver jamás").

The demonstration worsened her illness, and on the night of 12 July 1954, Kahlo had a high fever and was in extreme pain. At approximately 6 a.m. on 13 July 1954, her nurse found her dead in her bed. Kahlo was 47 years old. The official cause of death was pulmonary embolism, although no autopsy was performed.

On the evening of 13 July, Kahlo's body was taken to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where it lay in state under a Communist flag. The following day, it was carried to the Panteón Civil de Dolores, where friends and family attended an informal funeral ceremony. Hundreds of admirers stood outside. In accordance with her wishes, Kahlo was cremated. Rivera, who stated that her death was "the most tragic day of my life", died three years later, in 1957. Kahlo's ashes are displayed in a pre-Columbian urn at La Casa Azul, which opened as a museum in 1958.

Recognition

Kahlo's work as an artist remained relatively unknown until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and political activists. By the early 1990s, she had become a recognized figure in art history. She was also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, the feminism movement, and the LGBTQ+ community.

Kahlo's work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions.

Personal life

Kahlo's interests in politics and art led her to join the Mexican Communist Party in 1927, through which she met fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera. The couple married in 1929. He was 42 and she was 22.

The couple divorced in 1939, but remarried December 8, 1940, in San Francisco, California. A year after Kahlo's death, on July 29, 1955, Rivera married Emma Hurtado, his agent since 1946.

Kahlo and Rivera had no children together.

Frida Kahlo quotes

"They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

"I paint flowers so they will not die."

"At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can."

"Nothing is worth more than laughter."

"The most important part of the body is the brain. Of my face, I like the eyebrows and eyes."

Interesting facts about Frida Kahlo

Frida was born in Mexico, but her father was German.

Her name, which was originally spelled "Frieda" means "peace" in German.

Frida survived both polio and a bus crash.

She married a man with a name even longer than hers. Her husband's full name was Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez.

She exaggerated her facial hair in her self-portraits.

Because of the bright clothing she wore, she was asked by children, "Where's the circus?"

She was born and died in the same house, called "La Casa Azul" (The Blue House), which is now known as Frida Kahlo Museum.

Commemorations

Kahlo's legacy has been commemorated in several ways:

La Casa Azul, her home in Coyoacán, was opened as a museum in 1958, and has become one of the most popular museums in Mexico City, with approximately 25,000 visitors monthly.

The city dedicated a park, Parque Frida Kahlo, to her in Coyoacán in 1985. The park features a bronze statue of Kahlo.

In the United States, she became the first Hispanic woman to be honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 2001.

She was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago that celebrates LGBT history and people, in 2012.

Kahlo received several commemorations on the centenary of her birth in 2007.

Notable artists such as Marina Abramovic, Alana Archer, Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso, Yasumasa Morimura, Cris Melo, Rupert Garcia, and others have used or appropriated Kahlo's imagery into their own works.

Kahlo's life and art have inspired artists in various fields. Kahlo has also been the subject of several stage performances.

In 2018, Mattel unveiled seventeen new Barbie dolls in celebration of International Women's Day, including one of Kahlo. Critics objected to the doll's slim waist and noticeably missing unibrow.

In 2018, San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to rename Phelan Avenue to Frida Kahlo Way. Frida Kahlo Way is the home of City College of San Francisco and Archbishop Riordan High School.

In 2019, Frida was featured on a mural painted by Rafael Blanco in downtown Reno, Nevada.

In 2019, Frida's "Fantasmones Siniestros" ("Sinister Ghosts") was burned to ashes, publicizing an Ethereum NFT.

In 2022, as part of a collaboration with Centre Pompidou, Swatch released a watch based on The Frame.

Solo exhibitions

4 January 2022 onwards Frida Kahlo: The Life of an Icon at Barangaroo Reserve, Sydney. Audio visual exhibition created by the Frida Kahlo Corporation.

8 February - 12 May 2019 - Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at the Brooklyn Museum. This was the largest U.S. exhibition in a decade devoted solely to the painter and the only U.S. show to feature her Tehuana clothing, hand-painted corsets and other never-before-seen items that had been locked away after the artist's death and rediscovered in 2004.

16 June - 18 November 2018 - Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The basis for the later Brooklyn Museum exhibit.

3 February - 30 April 2016 - Frida Kahlo: Paintings and Graphic Art From Mexican Collections at the Faberge Museum, St. Petersburg. Russia's first retrospective of Kahlo's work.

27 October 2007 - 20 January 2008 - Frida Kahlo an exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 20 February - 18 May 2008; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 16 June - 28 September 2008.

1-15 November 1938 - Frida's first solo exhibit and New York debut at the Museum of Modern Art. Georgia O'Keeffe, Isamu Noguchi, and other prominent American artists attended the opening; approximately half of the paintings were sold.

Images for kids

Kahlo (on the right) and her sisters Cristina, Matilde, and Adriana, photographed by their father, 1916

Frida photographed in 1932 by her father, Guillermo

Kahlo and Rivera's houses in San Ángel; they lived there from 1934 until their divorce in 1939, after which it became his studio

1937 photograph by Toni Frissell, from a fashion shoot for Vogue

In Spanish: Frida Kahlo para niños

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Clean Drinking Water

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This Is How One Sixth Grade Girl Helped Improve Flint’s Water Crisis

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In reaction to Flint’s water crisis, sixth grader Mari Copeny wrote a letter to President Barack Obama that eventually helped her made the lives of locals in her Michigan hometown much better. This is her story.

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Gender Equality: Anti-Child Marriage

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With the backing of the nonprofit The Strongheart Group, Sonita came to the United States in 2015 to pursue her dream of getting an education. Over the course of a few short years, in partnership with Strongheart, Sonita has transformed from a teenager with no formal education into a high school graduate recognized as the leading youth advocate for child marriage in the world.

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Labor Conditions

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Born in Mexico, Lucas Benitez moved to Immokalee, Fla., at 17 to work in the tomato fields, where he seethed over the mistreatment, poor pay and backbreaking working conditions. (Florida growers produce almost half of the nation's $1.3 billion annual tomato crop.)

As founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), Benitez has become a leader in the struggle to end exploitation in America's agricultural fields. A few years after CIW began in 1992, Benitez, now 37, helped organize a strike of more than 3,000 Mexican, Central American and Haitian workers.

In 2001, CIW launched its Campaign for Fair Food, forging an alliance between farmworkers and consumers, including student, religious, environmental and labor groups. CIW scored its first major victory in 2005, when Taco Bell agreed to improve wages and working conditions in response to a national consumer boycott. So far, 11 giant retail food chains and supermarkets - including Aramark, Bon Appetit, Burger King, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Compass Group, McDonald's, Sodexo, Subway, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and Yum Brands - have signed binding agreements with CIW that require growers to pass along an extra penny to workers per pound of product sold, raising the average annual wage from $10,000 to $17,000. (Wendy's and Publix supermarkets are still holdouts and targets of CIW-led protests.)

CIW's efforts have also forged a new approach to corporate social responsibility. Through its Fair Food campaign, CIW has persuaded major food corporations to agree to purchase tomatoes only from the 26 participating growers, who account for 90 percent of tomato industry revenues and have each signed a code of conduct agreeing to regular audits of their workplace practices, including review of pay, sexual harassment and other labor issues. CIW conducts worker education sessions on the farms and on company time to ensure that workers understand their new rights under the Fair Food Code of Conduct.

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Activists to Watch: Lucas Benitez | BillMoyers.com

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Born in Mexico, Lucas Benitez moved to Immokalee, Fla., at 17 to work in the tomato fields, where he seethed over the mistreatment, poor pay and backbreaking working conditions. (Florida growers produce almost half of the nation's $1.3 billion annual tomato crop.)

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Labor Rights

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Teresa Cheng, now 26, first became involved in labor rights activism at the University of Southern California, where she led an anti-sweatshop campaign that culminated in the occupation of the university president's office. As a national organizer for United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), she trained and coordinated a network of student labor organizations across the country that waged several successful campaigns in solidarity with unions to demand that global corporations respect workers' rights.

One of Cheng's first efforts was to mobilize a national campaign to pressure Russell Athletics, which produces college-licensed apparel, to rehire 1,200 Honduran workers who it had fired after they voted to unionize. USAS also picketed the National Basketball Association (NBA) finals in Orlando, Fla., and Los Angeles to protest the NBA's licensing agreement with Russell. In addition, students distributed leaflets inside Sports Authority stores and sent Twitter messages to customers of the Dick's Sporting Goods chain, urging them to boycott Russell products. Cheng helped arrange a letter, signed by 65 members of Congress, that voiced "grave concern about reports of severe violations" of workers' rights at Russell. Russell agreed to rehire the workers and open a new plant in Honduras as a unionized factory and also pledged not to fight efforts by workers to unionize at the company's seven other factories in the country. Working through USAS, Cheng helped mobilize student activists on about 100 campuses to persuade their universities to sever licensing agreements with Russell.

Following her tenure at USAS, she lived in Honduras, working with the Central General de Trabajadores national trade union to forge a global alliance of workers at Adidas contract factories. A dozen garment worker unions, from Honduras to Bangladesh, have now formed the International Union League for Brand Responsibility, demanding that German sportswear giant Adidas bargain directly with the subcontracted workers who sew its products and guarantee living wages, safe factories and stable jobs. This month the campaign heated up, with Adidas contract factory workers staging coordinated protests from Jakarta to Bangalore to San Salvador.

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Activists to Watch: Teresa Cheng | BillMoyers.com

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Teresa Cheng, now 26, first became involved in labor rights activism at the University of Southern California, where she led an anti-sweatshop campaign that culminated in the occupation of the university president's office.

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Economic Equality

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Ellis-Lamkins is the co-founder and CEO of Promise, a California-based company reworking the bail system. Prior to this, she served as the Head of Care at Honor, the CEO of the anti-poverty organization Green For All, and the Executive Officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, an organized labor federation representing more than 100 unions and more than 110,000 members in California's Santa Clara and San Benito counties.

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Labor Rights

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UE Young Activists who participated in these event were Gary DeLuke, Local 170; Kathleen Coonrod, Local 203; Ryan Macdonald, Local 234; Autumn Martinez, Local 255; Emma Paradis, Local 255; Naomi Grayck, Local 255; Cettina Costagliola, Local 255; Charity Dugener, Local 267; Lyndsey O'Day, national office administrative assistant; and Margo Nikitas, associate general counsel.

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Children's Rights

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The 'luckiest girl in India': Meet the children's rights activist, 14, who hugged Michelle Obama and was praised for her work - but still refused the First Lady's gift

Payal Jangid is the leader of the child parliament in her Indian village

But she had no idea how significant her meeting with Michelle Obama was

The First Lady tried to gift her a ring, but Payal was taught to decline gifts

And she promised the teenager she would introduce her to her daughter

When she was invited to meet U.S President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle the naïve teenager had no understanding of the importance of such a meeting.

But after getting a warm hug from the First Lady and making international headlines, Payal Jangid, 14, feels she is 'the luckiest girl in India'.

Payal works tirelessly to support the right to education for young girls in India and dedicates her life to ending the practice of child marriage.

She was chosen out of many young girls in India to meet the Obamas during their three-day visit to India this week.

The First Lady hugged Payal while her husband met with Nobel Peace Prize winner and anti-child labor activist Kailash Satyarthi.

Payal, from Virat Nagar, on the outskirts of Jaipur, in the western state of Rajasthan, is a leader of the child parliament in her village, and admits she did not know who Michelle Obama was until she met her.

She said: 'She was lovely and after she hugged me people started asking me how I felt. I kept asking people why are people so interested and only then did I come to know how popular Michelle is.'

She added: 'I was surprised when she hugged me as most famous personalities do not even talk to poor people like me.

'She even took out a ring and handed it to me but I politely refused to take it as my parents have taught me to not take gifts. I was already in awe of her and didn't know how to react in that moment.

'She praised me for my work and that was the biggest present. I had tears in my eyes.

'She told me her younger daughter is my age and that she would bring her to meet me when she visits India next.'

Payal, along with 12 other activists aged between 10-14 years old, is very vocal about child rights and encourages parents in her village to send their children to school.

She said: 'In our society education is not given much importance but it is my duty to explain to the older generation how schooling is very much needed.

'We formed this council comprising of children to speak about the problems faced by our peers and why we need school. I think that's why I was chosen to meet the Obamas because I'm trying to improve my community.'

In 2013, Payal was chosen from a dozen candidates in her class to lead the children council.

She said: 'We organize meetings and discuss various issues like lack of separate toilets for girls in schools and the need to stop child marriage and let children be children.

'We go from door to door and explain to parents the importance of education. We also tell them not to beat their children and respect their emotions. If parents are loving and caring, children will have a better environment to grow. We aim to make our village 'child friendly'.'

Payal, whose father works as a carpenter, is in a government-run school and dreams of becoming a teacher so that she can 'give education to underprivileged children when I am older'.

She said: 'I want to make most of this opportunity and aim to become a teacher so that I can give education to underprivileged children when I am older.'

Payal who has two sisters and one brother, has been working with Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood) since 2012. It's an India-based movement campaigning for the rights of children started in 1980 by Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi.

Payal now spends most of her free time going round rural villages to stop child marriages.

For her active participation in promoting children's rights, Payal was also chosen as the jury member of the World Children's Prize that awarded Malala Yousafzai, in October 2014.

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Meet the children's rights activist, 14, who hugged Michelle Obama

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Payal Jangid is the leader of the child parliament in her Indian village But she had no idea how significant her meeting with Michelle Obama was The First Lady tried to gift her a ring, but Payal was taught to decline gifts And she promised the teenager she would introduce her to her daughter When she was invited to meet U.S President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle the naïve teenager had no understanding of the importance of such a meeting.

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Education Rights

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When a then 9-year-old Asean Johnson took the microphone to challenge the Chicago Board of Education on school closings around the city, his voice never wavered. In fact, with each declaration of why education should be a right, not a privilege for all children, his voice boomed with an ignited clarity. Cities around the United States have continued to close primarily minority schools, and Chicago is no exception. Just last year, 54 public schools were closed in the city. Johnson, a student at Marcus Garvey Elementary, knew that he and his classmates could also see their school doors closed, so he did what most of us wouldn't dream of doing at age 9, he began campaigning and calling out local politicians, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

"You should be investing in these schools, not closing them. You should be supporting these schools, not closing them," Johnson said in his fiery speech that made the crowd roar with approval. "We shall not be moved today. We're going to city hall; we are informing Rahm Emanuel [that] we are not toys. We are not going down without a fight." Today, Johnson is still fighting. Ebony chatted with the fourth grader (yes, fourth grader) about the passion behind his speech, why he will continue to fight for education reform in this country and what all children can do to get involved.

EBONY: What inspired you to give you your speech? You were so passionate and it was inspirational to so many people. Where does that fire come from?

Asean Johnson: Many inspired me to give my speech at the 3-day March for Education Justice in May 2013. After speaking at meetings and hearings to save Marcus Garvey School, and listening to the cry of the community, I knew that I had to speak for all those who couldn't. My great-granddad inspired me because he always told me to fight for what I believe in and never give up. I feel I got the courage to be outspoken from my mother. She always tells me to speak my mind and use words to express my feelings. My dad took public speaking classes and he gives me advice.

EBONY: What do you do to prepare for a speech? Do you ever get nervous?

AJ: To prepare for a speech, I first read information on the topic. I knew a lot about the school closings from going to board meetings, hearings and articles in the newspaper. For the CPS (Chicago Public Schools) meetings, we only had 2 minutes to speak, so I had to practice so that I could get my message out in time. At the rally, I spoke from my heart and said what was on my mind. Sometimes I have notes or points to help me stay on the issues. I never get nervous when speaking. Actually, I get excited when I have to give a speech. I feel very powerful when speaking.

EBONY: How have politicians responded to you? Has Rahm Emanuel or any other politicians responded to you?

AJ: I have met a lot of politicians. Congressman John Lewis at the March on Washington encouraged me to continue to speak out and be a voice. I met a lot of alderman and State Representatives in Chicago, who encouraged me too. I have never met Mayor Rahm Emanuel and he did not respond to any of my letters.

EBONY: Why is education so important to you?

AJ: Without an education, how will you survive? My great-granddad and granddad are from Mississippi. They both were born in the 1930's and they only had a 3 rd grade education. They were sharecroppers and couldn't go to school because they had to work in the field. They both taught themselves how to read and write. Now, children don't have to work; we can go to school. Education prepares you for the future. We need those fundamentals to be successful.

EBONY: What is the biggest issue that you and your friends face in school?

AJ: The biggest issues my friends and I are facing are too many standardize test. We take so many tests that my teacher cannot teach her lessons. We miss out on art, Spanish and other classwork so we can prepare for tests. The test does not go with the lesson plan and some of my friends don't do well on them. Some test really well and some don't. When the scores are posted on the wall it makes my friends feel bad. We don't like the ISAT and most of my friends are opting out of the test. If we didn't have so many tests, we could do science projects and more learning.

EBONY: What things in Chicago would you like to see change? Many people who watch the news only hear bad things about Chicago. What do you want people to know about your city?

AJ: I would like to see the murder rate change in Chicago, more public neighborhood schools, equal funding in all schools and more activities for students. Chicago is a nice city but in Black communities we do not have what other communities have. I want people to know that many people in Chicago care about our city and we will keep fighting to take back Chicago.

EBONY: In what ways can students get involved in their schools?

AJ: One way students can get more involved in their schools is by attending school and board meetings. Students see what is going on in the school but are afraid to speak out. It is our education and we have to get involved. If their school doesn't have the resources that they need, they should go to CPS and request them. Ask their parents to attend meetings and get them involved. If they want to fight for resources, they can let the community know and the community will help them fight. Every child deserves the right to a quality education.

EBONY: What do you like to do in your spare time?

AJ: In my spare time I like to play football and basketball. Football season is over now and basketball doesn't start at my school until 5 th grade. I enjoy gardening club at my school, I go on Thursday's after school. I like to go to student union meetings and play with my friends. I can't play video games during the week so if I have time on the weekend I play Madden and NBA 2K14.

EBONY: Is a career in politics in your future?

AJ: Right now I'm not sure of politics when I grow up. I would like to be a scientist or football player. I have thought about running for president or being an elected official. If I do run for office, I will handle the real issues that affect everyday people.

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Asean Johnson: Chicago's Activist 4th Grader Fights for Educational Equality

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When a then 9-year-old Asean Johnson took the microphone to challenge the Chicago Board of Education on school closings around the city, his voice never wavered. In fact, with each declaration of why education should be a right, not a privilege for all children, his voice boomed with an ignited clarity.

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Gender Rights

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Photograph by Miles Aldridge for TIME

Gavin Grimm was 15 when he reintroduced himself to his classmates at Gloucester High School in Virginia as the boy he knew himself to be. As someone who also transitioned in high school, I know intimately how freeing and fraught it can be to live your truth.

Shortly after Gavin transitioned, some parents complained about his use of the boys' restroom, making a universal private experience a public spectacle. But when the school board banned Gavin from that restroom, he sued his district, stating that the decision violated Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding.

TIME 100

Now 17, Gavin is the cherubic face of a reductive, dirty debate about trans people's right to exist in public spaces without hostility, harassment and violence. His case, which remains ongoing in Virginia, has implications that extend far beyond bathrooms. It's about a greater sense of belonging for us all-at school, at home and in our neighborhoods and places of work and worship. So many are made to feel as if they should hide, pretend or perish. Gavin's refusal to be treated unjustly is an enduring reminder that we will not be stalled.

Mock is an activist and the author of Surpassing Certainty

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Gavin Grimm: The World's 100 Most Influential People

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Gavin Grimm was 15 when he re­introduced himself to his classmates at Gloucester High School in Virginia as the boy he knew himself to be. As someone who also transitioned in high school, I know intimately how freeing and fraught it can be to live your truth.

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Cultural Equality

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New York, NY-February 2, 2017-Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL), the global children's publishing, education, and media company, has acquired world rights to an activism book written by Marley Dias, the 12 year-old social activist behind #1000BlackGirlBooks-an international movement to collect and donate children's books that feature Black girls as the lead character. Marley is using her voice to advocate for social justice, a commitment reflected by her ambitious life goals: she dreams of becoming an editor of her very own magazine and plans to use media to spread positive messages and to perpetuate more socially conscious pop culture. The book will be published in Spring 2018 by Scholastic Press.

"Marley's energy and passion are electric!" said Andrea Davis Pinkney, Vice President, Executive Editor, Scholastic. "Through her smarts and ingenuity, she's delivered a jolt of inspiration that's sent an unstoppable shock-wave to kids everywhere who've stood up with Marley to shout 'Yes!' to the power of positive action. In this book, Marley will share her dynamic wisdom with readers everywhere. We're thrilled to welcome her to the Scholastic family."

"I am so excited to be doing this book with Scholastic," said Marley Dias. "All my friends can probably only name one publishing house and that is Scholastic; they are everywhere. Scholastic is the perfect partner for spreading my message of diversity, inclusion and social action."
About the Book
In her forthcoming nonfiction book for ages 10 and up, Marley Dias, the powerhouse girl-wonder who started the #1000blackgirlbooks campaign, shows kids how to make their own dreams come true. In this accessible "keep-it-real" guide, Marley tells how she's turned her passion into a literacy crusade that has captured the attention of the media, policymakers, and young people throughout the world.

Marley offers smart tips for "paying it forward" with whatever makes your heart sing, while getting support from parents, teachers, and friends to turn your dreams into reality. This book explores activism, social justice, volunteerism, equity and inclusion, using social media for good (not just makeup tutorials and angry tweets), and shows how young people can galvanize their strengths to make positive changes in our world.

Also focusing on the importance of literacy and diversity, Marley offers suggestions on book selection, book-talking, and sharing titles. She delivers hands-on strategies for becoming a lifelong reader. She provides examples based on her extensive literacy advocacy and community work with schools and students throughout the world.
About Marley Dias
Marley Dias is the promising, 12 year-old social activist behind #1000BlackGirlBooks, an international movement to collect and donate children's books that feature Black girls as the lead character. Since birth, Marley has been immersed in the world of social activism, surrounded by a village of caring, concerned, active adults and children dedicated to service to humanity, and specifically people of African descent. When she was 5 years old, her mother, Dr. Janice Johnson Dias, co-founded the GrassROOTS Community Foundation (GCF), a public health and social action organization dedicated to the support and empowerment of people who live in impoverished communities, especially women and young girls. Her father, Scott Dias, is a Real Estate Analytical Geographer. Both parents have been instrumental in developing Marley's understanding of key social justice issues and commitment to social change. When she became frustrated by a lack of Black female role models in her school books-and her mother asked her what she was going to do about it-she knew exactly how to respond.

With the help of GrassROOTS, Marley launched the #1000BlackGirlBooks drive in November of 2015, leveraging the power of social media to reach a large audience. The goal was to collect 1,000 books featuring Black female protagonists by February 2016. The story went viral and was picked up by media outlets around the world as well as bloggers, schools, youth-focused organizations and thousands of individuals who wanted to participate in the project.

In addition to features in major media outlets such as Elle, People, Jezebel, PhillyVoice, FOX29's Good Day Philadelphia and The Huffington Post (to name a few), the initiative quickly gained support from literary partners including Barnes & Noble, My Very Own Library, Scholastic, and Putnam Books, which have donated books and funds to the cause. Well-known authors and artists including Jacqueline Woodson and Rita Williams-Garcia have contributed books as well.

In light of the campaign's huge success, Marley has appeared on Ellen (where she received a laptop and a $10,000 contribution from Shutterfly), The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (where she received the show's first ever "Golden Hunnit/Keep It 100" award), CBS This Morning and Charlie Rose. In addition, Marley was honored at BET's Black Girls Rock! with a M.A.D. (Making a Difference) Award. Marley was named Editor in Residence of Elle.com July of 2016 where she interviewed Ava DuVernay, Misty Copeland and Hillary Clinton.

Having collected over 8,000 books to-date, Marley has far exceeded #1000BlackGirlBooks' goals. In February 2016, Marley and GrassROOTS Community Foundation donated over 1,000 of the books to Retreat School in the Parish of Saint Mary, Jamaica, where her mother grew up. Marley has also donated to The Henry C. Lea School in Philadelphia, Speedway Academies in Newark, New Jersey, Renzuli Academy in Connecticut, and St. Cloud Elementary in West Orange, New Jersey, where she was first inspired to launch the movement. In fact, the Town Council of West Orange held a session to recognize Marley for her inspiring proactive initiatives. Marley is also the winner of the National Pretty Brown Girl Day "Dream Big" Award, awarded to her at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She has also spoken at the White House's United State of Women Conference where she shared the stage with Michelle Obama, Oprah, Sophia Bush and Amy Poehler.

The seventh grader is only getting started, and will continue to provide young girls like herself with relatable role models through #1000BlackGirlBooks. Marley is using her voice to advocate for social justice, a commitment reflected by her ambitious life goals: she dreams of founding and editing her own magazine, and plans to use media to promote positive messages and to perpetuate more socially conscious pop culture.

In December 2015, Marley and the GrassROOTS Community Foundation traveled to Ghana, West Africa, on a humanitarian mission to support the health and well-being of Ghanaian youth and their families. The trip included serving as health ambassadors for African Health Now and she helped to provide meals for children at local orphanages.

Marley enjoys reading, dancing, listening to music, eating sushi and being active with her friends. She resides in West Orange, New Jersey, with her mother and father.
About Scholastic
Scholastic Corporation (NASDAQ: SCHL) is the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books, a leading provider of print and digital instructional materials for pre-K to grade 12, and a producer of educational and entertaining children's media. The Company creates quality books and ebooks, print and technology-based learning materials and programs, classroom magazines and other products that, in combination, offer schools customized solutions to support children's learning both at school and at home. The Company also makes quality, affordable books available to all children through school-based book clubs and book fairs. With a 96 year history of service to schools and families, Scholastic continues to carry out its commitment to "Open a World of Possible" for all children. Learn more at www.scholastic.com.
(Click the image below to open a hi-res version in a new window) Photo credit: Andrea Cipriani Mecchi Media contacts:
Tracy van Straaten
VP, Trade Publicity, Scholastic
212/389-3782
tvanstraaten@scholastic.com

Lauren Donovan
Publicity Director
212-389-3786
ldonovan@scholastic.com

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Scholastic to Publish Activism Book by Marley Dias, 12-Year-Old #1000BlackGirlBooks Founder, in Spring 2018

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New York, NY-February 2, 2017-Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL), the global children's publishing, education, and media company, has acquired world rights to an activism book written by Marley Dias, the 12 year-old social activist behind #1000BlackGirlBooks-an international movement to collect and donate children's books that feature Black girls as the lead character.

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Gender Equality

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Mo'ne Davis, a 5-foot-5 guard, excels in multiple sports, but has committed to play softball at Hampton University in Virginia next year. Credit Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times

PHILADELPHIA - The point guard with familiar braids stole the ball once, twice, three times in succession. She scooped in a shot, then twirled a layup over her head while facing away from the basket.

"Sweet!" a friend yelled at a recent high school game.

This is the future Mo'ne Davis imagined for herself four summers ago, when she became the first girl to pitch a shutout at the Little League World Series and, apparently, was the first African-American girl to participate in the tournament.

She spoke then of wanting to play college basketball at powerhouse Connecticut and professionally in the W.N.B.A. But circumstances change, teenage interests diverge, horizons broaden.

Now 17 and a senior at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia, Davis continues to excel in multiple sports. But an ankle injury last summer required an extended recovery and, she said, dampened the interest of basketball recruiters from midmajor colleges.

Instead, Davis has committed to playing softball - she is a shortstop - at Hampton University in Virginia, with an opportunity to explore basketball there if her first love blooms anew.

Her decision to attend a historically black university was partly inspired by the positive experiences of older friends. It also reflected a social awakening informed, among other things, by meeting President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama at the White House in 2014; an incident in 2015 that victimized her on social media; and a bus trip through the South that year with her rec-center baseball team to visit landmarks of the civil rights era.

After attending the predominantly white Springside Chestnut Hill Academy since second grade, Davis said, "I just thought it was a perfect fit to be able to play with other girls who look like me or perhaps grew up kind of the same way I grew up."

That eye-opening 2015 trip through the South began with wonder and horror.

On June 17, 2015, as Davis and her teammates departed by bus from Philadelphia to Washington, the white supremacist Dylann Roof shot to death nine parishioners, all African-Americans, in a massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.

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In the summer of 2014, Davis became the first girl to pitch a shutout at the Little League World Series. Credit Brett Carlsen for The New York Times

Until then, Davis said, she had paid little or no attention to the news beyond sports. But the next morning, as she and her teammates ate breakfast in their hotel in Washington, she said they watched television, stunned and afraid. News reports suggested the gunman, whose arrest had not yet been announced, might be headed northward as they headed southward.

"It showed that there was still hate in the country," Davis said. "It changed the way I started to see things."

Later that day came another significant moment for Davis, this one affirming and uplifting. She and her teammates met Representative John Lewis of Georgia, a towering activist in the civil rights movement who helped lead the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965 to promote black voter registration and the Freedom Rides that challenged segregation of public buses.

For months before the trip, the teenage athletes studied the country's black history, from slavery through the civil rights era. They had seen the movie "Selma" and videos of Lewis and other demonstrators being clubbed by Alabama state troopers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7, 1965, in what became known as Bloody Sunday.

When Davis met him in person, she said Lewis's stature left her breathless.

"You see him in these movies and videos, and he doesn't seem like a human being after everything he's gone through," Davis said.

Lewis told the players a well-known story about forgiveness and reconciliation. In 2009, he received a visit on Capitol Hill from a former supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. Decades earlier, the man and others had attacked and bloodied Lewis when he tried to enter a waiting room for whites at a bus station in Rock Hill, S.C.

"Mr. Lewis, I'm one of the people that beat you," Elwin Wilson, the former Klan supporter, then in his 70s, and who died in 2013, told the congressman. "I want to apologize. Will you forgive me?"

Wilson began crying.

"I forgive you," Lewis said.

The men hugged.

Recounting the story, Davis said: "I thought that was one of the coolest things ever. This world is already full of hate. You can't just keep putting hate out there."

Lewis's compassion validated for Davis a gesture of tolerance she had made three months earlier, in March 2015. A baseball player named Joey Casselberry at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania wrote dismissively on Twitter about Davis's accomplishments in the 2014 Little League World Series and called her a "slut."

His odious remarks resulted in his suspension for the 2015 season, but Davis asked that Casselberry be reinstated, saying at the time, "Everyone makes mistakes and everyone deserves a second chance."

Casselberry was permitted back on the Bloomsburg team in 2016. A university spokesman said Davis's request did not play a role in that decision. But she remains assured that absolution was the correct response. "We decided to take the high road and be the bigger person," she said.

Now, as in Little League, Davis seems to possess a preternatural calm and poise on the court and the playing field. Her basketball coach, Florence Hagains, described her as a player who phones at night to discuss ways to improve, eagerly credits her teammates and encourages the uncertain eighth-grader on Springside Chestnut Hill's varsity roster.

Emily McNesby, a former high school soccer teammate of Davis's who now plays at Maryland, said, "She's not one of these people who's like, 'I'm already famous so I don't have to work hard.' She always picked up everyone's mood. She brought a happy spirit to the team."

In an age of specialization, Davis has followed her own path, playing as many sports as she can squeeze into her calendar. She has won state championships in soccer and softball among Pennsylvania's independent high schools. And she continues to pitch in the summers, throwing from a major league distance of 60 feet 6 inches.

In 2017, her Philadelphia team, which included seven members of the Little League World Series squad, won a national competition called the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities World Series.

Davis pitched nine and a third innings in the tournament, allowing only two earned runs. She threw a gem in the semifinals, retiring eight of the first 12 batters she faced, spotting her fastball at a speed in the mid-70s and sprinkling her curve and changeup to keep hitters off balance.

"I go more for command of my pitches now than overpowering people," the 5-foot-5 Davis said. "I know that's not going to work."

She has lived her sports career in reverse, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and pitching before a television audience of millions before eighth grade, then adjusting to becoming a high school athlete in much less visible circumstances.

Davis with Michelle Obama during the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in Washington in 2014. Credit Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

During the Little League World Series, Davis pulled a hoodie tight over her head one night to be able to walk anonymously around the ballpark in Williamsport, Pa. Otherwise, she needed security and a golf cart to get around, such was the crush of interest.

Four months later, her pioneering effort was celebrated by the Obamas, who invited her to the White House. She said she was inspired by their counsel: "You changed the sports world. Keep going. Don't let anyone stop you."

At times, though, Davis said, the attention became overwhelming. ("I was a kid; I wasn't prepared for this.") Now, she gets requests for the occasional autograph and photograph but no longer plays in a spotlight that was both illuminating and claustrophobic.

She is expansive and funny during interviews and plans to major in communications at Hampton, hoping to become a motivational speaker for children and to host her own television sports show.

Around friends, she is known simply as Mo, and she demurs when they teasingly call her "Big Time" and "Superstar."

"She's a novelty in the white community, a celebrity you want to take a picture with, but in the black community, she's more of a cultural icon," said Steve Bandura, 57, Davis's longtime rec-center coach and mentor, who is white. "Little League baseball is a white suburban sport. Mo'ne is an African-American girl. She crossed every barrier."

It was Bandura's idea for the 2015 tour of civil rights landmarks. Years ago, he gave up a sales and marketing career to work with disadvantaged youth. In 1995, at the Marian Anderson Recreation Center, in South Philadelphia, he formed a youth sports development organization called the Anderson Monarchs - named after the celebrated African-American singer and the famed Negro League baseball team, the Kansas City Monarchs.

To understand the present, Bandura told Davis and her teammates, they must understand the past. So the Monarchs departed in June 2015 on a 23-day tour of playing games and gaining a firsthand appreciation of the courage and struggle of black history in America.

They traveled in a 1947 Flxible Clipper bus, signifying the year that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

Around friends, Davis is known simply as Mo. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times

On June 24, Davis's 14th birthday, the Monarchs visited the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. In 1963, four black girls - three of them age 14 - were killed at the church in a bombing by white supremacists.

"We walked past where the bomb was placed; I still don't have words for it," Davis said. "What could those girls have done in their lives? They could have changed the world."

In Selma, after the Monarchs walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and saw murals and artifacts that included a hooded Klan outfit, Davis and her stepfather consoled a white teammate, Carter Davis, who said he grew emotional and began expressing guilt about the historical outrages committed against blacks.

"He was 13 at the time; he was torn apart," Mo'ne Davis said. She and her stepfather, Mark Williams, invited Carter Davis to stay with them that night and played the card game Uno to lighten the mood.

"They were like, 'You're one of us, you're not at fault, you shouldn't feel bad,'" Carter Davis said.

The most unnerving moment of the trip for her, Mo'ne Davis said, came at the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. An exhibit there provided a stark simulation of a lunch counter sit-in, with visitors feeling jostled and hearing threats and the sounds of objects being thrown and broken.

"I couldn't sit through the whole thing," Davis said. "I got up and thought I was going to cry. It scared me so bad."

The trip, she said, made her realize that "being African-American, not everything is going to be the same as it is for my friend who is white." But it also left her thankful "for all the people who fought for the freedom we now have."

Next fall, Davis will head off to college to study and play softball. She looks forward to playing in the infield and getting a chance to bat. But she does not plan to pitch. The whipping motion of pitching a softball underhand is nothing like throwing a baseball overhand.

She laughed. "I know the mechanics," she said, "but for some reason the ball just doesn't reach home plate."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SP1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Onetime Superstar in Little League Embraces Social Awareness, and Softball. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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For Mo'ne Davis, a Social Awakening and a Commitment to Hampton

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PHILADELPHIA - The point guard with familiar braids stole the ball once, twice, three times in succession. She scooped in a shot, then twirled a layup over her head while facing away from the basket. "Sweet!" a friend yelled at a recent high school game.

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Racial Equality

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Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

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Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

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Racial Equality

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Kids learn about the biography of Anne Frank, Jewish girl who wrote about hiding from the Nazis in World War II.

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Racial Equality

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Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in or around 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. Douglass himself was never sure of his exact birth date.

His mother was an enslaved Black women and his father was white and of European descent. He was actually born Frederick Bailey (his mother's name), and took the name Douglass only after he escaped. His full name at birth was "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey."

After he was separated from his mother as an infant, Douglass lived for a time with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. However, at the age of six, he was moved away from her to live and work on the Wye House plantation in Maryland.

From there, Douglass was "given" to Lucretia Auld, whose husband, Thomas, sent him to work with his brother Hugh in Baltimore. Douglass credits Hugh's wife Sophia with first teaching him the alphabet. With that foundation, Douglass then taught himself to read and write. By the time he was hired out to work under William Freeland, he was teaching other enslaved people to read using the Bible.

As word spread of his efforts to educate fellow enslaved people, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, a farmer who was known for his brutal treatment of the enslaved people in his charge. Roughly 16 at this time, Douglass was regularly whipped by Covey.

Frederick Douglass Escapes from Slavery

After several failed attempts at escape, Douglass finally left Covey's farm in 1838, first boarding a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland. From there he traveled through Delaware, another slave state, before arriving in New York and the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles.

Once settled in New York, he sent for Anna Murray, a free Black woman from Baltimore he met while in captivity with the Aulds. She joined him, and the two were married in September 1838. They had five children together.

From Slavery to Abolitionist Leader

After their marriage, the young couple moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they met Nathan and Mary Johnson, a married couple who were born "free persons of color." It was the Johnsons who inspired the couple to take the surname Douglass, after the character in the Sir Walter Scott poem, "The Lady of the Lake."

In New Bedford, Douglass began attending meetings of the abolitionist movement. During these meetings, he was exposed to the writings of abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison.

The two men eventually met when both were asked to speak at an abolitionist meeting, during which Douglass shared his story of slavery and escape. It was Garrison who encouraged Douglass to become a speaker and leader in the abolitionist movement.

By 1843, Douglass had become part of the American Anti-Slavery Society's "Hundred Conventions" project, a six-month tour through the United States. Douglass was physically assaulted several times during the tour by those opposed to the abolitionist movement.

In one particularly brutal attack, in Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass' hand was broken. The injuries never fully healed, and he never regained full use of his hand.

In 1858, radical abolitionist John Brown stayed with Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, as he planned his raid on the U.S. military arsenal at Harper's Ferry, part of his attempt to establish a stronghold of formerly enslaved people in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia. Brown was caught and hanged for masterminding the attack, offering the following prophetic words as his final statement: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass'

Two years later, Douglass published the first and most famous of his autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. (He also authored My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass).

In it Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he wrote: "From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom."

He also noted, "Thus is slavery the enemy of both the slave and the slaveholder."

Frederick Douglass in Ireland and Great Britain

Later that same year, Douglass would travel to Ireland and Great Britain. At the time, the former country was just entering the early stages of the Irish Potato Famine, or the Great Hunger.

While overseas, he was impressed by the relative freedom he had as a man of color, compared to what he had experienced in the United States. During his time in Ireland, he met the Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell, who became an inspiration for his later work.

In England, Douglass also delivered what would later be viewed as one of his most famous speeches, the so-called "London Reception Speech."

In the speech, he said, "What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?... I need not lift up the veil by giving you any experience of my own. Every one that can put two ideas together, must see the most fearful results from such a state of things..."

Frederick Douglass' Abolitionist Paper

When he returned to the United States in 1847, Douglass began publishing his own abolitionist newsletter, the North Star. He also became involved in the movement for women's rights.

He was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention, a gathering of women's rights activists in New York, in 1848.

He spoke forcefully during the meeting and said, "In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world."

He later included coverage of women's rights issues in the pages of the North Star. The newsletter's name was changed to Frederick Douglass' Paper in 1851, and was published until 1860, just before the start of the Civil War.

Frederick Douglass Quotes

In 1852, he delivered another of his more famous speeches, one that later came to be called "What to a slave is the 4th of July?"

In one section of the speech, Douglass noted, "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

For the 24th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, in 1886, Douglass delivered a rousing address in Washington, D.C., during which he said, "where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

Frederick Douglass During the Civil War

During the brutal conflict that divided the still-young United States, Douglass continued to speak and worked tirelessly for the end of slavery and the right of newly freed Black Americans to vote.

Although he supported President Abraham Lincoln in the early years of the Civil War, Douglass fell into disagreement with the politician after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which effectively ended the practice of slavery. Douglass was disappointed that Lincoln didn't use the proclamation to grant formerly enslaved people the right to vote, particularly after they had fought bravely alongside soldiers for the Union army.

It is said, though, that Douglass and Lincoln later reconciled and, following Lincoln's assassination in 1865, and the passage of the 13th amendment, 14th amendment, and 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which, respectively, outlawed slavery, granted formerly enslaved people citizenship and equal protection under the law, and protected all citizens from racial discrimination in voting), Douglass was asked to speak at the dedication of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Park in 1876.

Historians, in fact, suggest that Lincoln's widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, bequeathed the late-president's favorite walking stick to Douglass after that speech.

In the post-war Reconstruction era, Douglass served in many official positions in government, including as an ambassador to the Dominican Republic, thereby becoming the first Black man to hold high office. He also continued speaking and advocating for African American and women's rights.

In the 1868 presidential election, he supported the candidacy of former Union general Ulysses S. Grant, who promised to take a hard line against white supremacist-led insurgencies in the post-war South. Grant notably also oversaw passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which was designed to suppress the growing Ku Klux Klan movement.

Frederick Douglass: Later Life and Death

In 1877, Douglass met with Thomas Auld, the man who once "owned" him, and the two reportedly reconciled.

Douglass' wife Anna died in 1882, and he married white activist Helen Pitts in 1884.

In 1888, he became the first African American to receive a vote for President of the United States, during the Republican National Convention. Ultimately, though, Benjamin Harrison received the party nomination.

Douglass remained an active speaker, writer and activist until his death in 1895. He died after suffering a heart attack at home after arriving back from a meeting of the National Council of Women, a women's rights group still in its infancy at the time, in Washington, D.C.

His life's work still serves as an inspiration to those who seek equality and a more just society.

Sources

Frederick Douglas, PBS.org.
Frederick Douglas, National Parks Service, nps.gov.
Frederick Douglas, 1818-1895, Documenting the South, University of North Carolina, docsouth.unc.edu.
Frederick Douglass Quotes, brainyquote.com.
"Reception Speech. At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12, 1846." USF.edu.
"What to the slave is the 4th of July?" TeachingAmericanHistory.org.
Graham, D.A. (2017). "Donald Trump's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass." The Atlantic.

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Frederick Douglass - Narrative, Quotes & Facts | HISTORY

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Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. He became a leader in the abolitionist movement, which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War.

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Gender Equality

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Gender equality and the empowerment of women does not begin in the C-Suite. It starts in childhood in the classroom. The Good Search is an executive search practice that helps companies boost their diversity at the senior executive level. But we can't get there if girls don't go to school.

While it is hard to imagine, many parts of the world believe that girls do not deserve to go to school. But it is true. Around the globe, 62 million girls are not in school: in some countries, fewer than 10% of teenage girls complete secondary school. That's because those cultures believe girls are simply not worthy of education. However, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, the Peace Corps, and corporations worldwide have been working to change that. They are expanding access to education for adolescent girls around the world. Mrs. Obama is an American lawyer and writer who was First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She has worked tirelessly for a girl's right to education in an initiative called Let Girls Learn.

Gender Equality Begins with Education

Celebrating International Women's Day, the First Lady of the United States spoke on behalf of Let Girls Learn and teaches us a lesson in executive feminism: you can't get there if you can't go to school.

I've included excerpts below from Michelle Obama's speech below:

" . . . And like many of you, as a woman, I take all of this personally. While I'm thankful that I've never faced anything like the horrors that many of these girls endure, like most women, I know how it feels to be overlooked, to be underestimated, to have someone only half listen to your ideas at a meeting - to see them turn to the man next to you, the man you supervise, and assume he's in charge - or to experience those whistles and taunts as you walk down the street. And I've seen how these issues play out not just on a personal level, but on a national level in our laws and policies. You see, in my lifetime -- and I'm not that old -- it was perfectly legal for employers to discriminate against women. In my lifetime, women were not legally allowed to make fundamental decisions about their bodies -- and practically speaking, many still can't. In my lifetime, domestic violence was seen as a private matter between a man and his wife rather than as the horrific crime that it is. And today, it is so easy to take for granted all the progress we've made on these kinds of issues. But the fact is that right now, today, so many of these rights are under threat from all sides, always at risk of being rolled back if we let our guard down for a single minute. These issues aren't settled. These freedoms that we take for granted aren't guaranteed in stone. And they certainly didn't just come down to us as a gift from the heavens. No, these rights were secured through long, hard battles waged by women and men who marched, and protested, and made their voices heard in courtrooms and boardrooms and voting booths and the halls of Congress.

And make no mistake about it, education was central to every last one of those efforts. The ability to read, write, and analyze; the confidence to stand up and demand justice and equality; the qualifications and connections to get your foot in that door and take your seat at that table - all of that starts with education. And trust me, girls around the world, they understand this. They feel it in their bones, and they will do whatever it takes to get that education . . .

. . . Every single one of us has a role to play on this issue. And you can start today by going to LetGirlsLearn.gov and find out how to get involved right now. No contribution is too small, as you can see, because in the end, that's how we're going to solve this problem -- one girl, one school, one village at a time, with folks like all of you - particularly our young people - leading the way.

And no, it will not be easy. And it will not be quick. But make no mistake about it, we can do this. If we can make this kind of project - progress in just a year - in just a year - if we keep putting in this effort and this investment that these girls deserve, we can get this done. I know we are all up to the task. I know we are. I see it in your eyes. I know you feel that burning sensation, that sense of unfairness. Turn that into action. Turn that passion into something real. Those girls will be so grateful, because they are all of us. They are my daughters, and they are you."

If you are moved to donate to Let Girls Learn, please do. If you can help in other ways - by getting your company involved, as a for instance - please join in their good efforts. Our collective equality begins with access basic education: Let Girls Learn.

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Michelle Obama on Gender Equality| Let Girls Learn | The Good Search

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Gender Equality and the C-Suite Gender equality and the empowerment of women does not begin in the C-Suite. It starts in childhood in the classroom. The Good Search is an executive search practice that helps companies boost their diversity at the senior executive level. But we can't get there if girls don't go to school.

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Justice System

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In 2015, Kalief Browder, a young black man, died by suicide after spending years in pretrial detention and solitary confinement on New York's Rikers Island. More than three years after his death, his estate will receive a settlement from New York City.

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the city is currently finalizing a $3.3 million settlement with Browder's family. "Kalief Browder's story helped inspire numerous reforms to the justice system to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again," the city's law department said in a statement. "We hope that this settlement and our continuing reforms help bring some measure of closure to the Browder family."

In 2010, Browder, then 16, was with a friend when they were arrested and accused of stealing a man's backpack. Browder denied the charges, but he was on probation for a previous incident and was sent to the Rikers Island jail complex to await trial. Browder's family could not initially afford the $3,000 bail needed to secure his release - and by the time they managed to raise the money, a judge ruled that Browder was no longer eligible.

Browder continued to stress his innocence as he remained behind bars for three years, more than half of which was spent in solitary confinement. After years of his case being dragged out in the Bronx court system without a trial, a judge dismissed all charges against Browder in 2013. Two years later, the 22-year-old died by suicide outside his mother's home.

Browder's imprisonment and death drew national attention, and spurred calls for policy reform in New York, fueling efforts to mitigate the harm of incarceration on young adults and highlighting the damaging effects of solitary confinement. While the settlement this week marks the latest step New York City officials have taken to atone for Browder's death, the city has been criticized for moving away from other reforms it once promised.

Kalief Browder's death fueled a national discussion about race, criminal justice, and juvenile punishment

Browder began calling for criminal justice reform in New York shortly after his release in 2013, arguing that his case pointed to a number of problems in the city's criminal justice system, ranging from the failure to provide people with a speedy trial to the use of solitary confinement on people under 21 to the unnecessary complexities of the bail system.

His story was widely publicized in a 2014 New Yorker article, but attention increased after his death and the release of a high-profile documentary about Browder in 2017. Coming in the midst of growing national attention to police violence against African Americans, the story of Browder's long incarceration and mistreatment at Rikers (he told the New Yorker he was beaten by guards and other prisoners when he was not in solitary confinement) was seen as another example of how the justice system irreparably alters the lives of people of color.

The sudden death of Browder's mother, Venida, in 2016 also served as a powerful illustration of the ways this trauma further devastates black families.

New York City officials have regularly pointed to Browder's case when discussing reform efforts in the city. In December 2014, just months before Browder's death, Rikers Island stopped placing 16- and 17-year-olds in solitary confinement. One month later, in January 2015, city officials announced that solitary confinement would no longer be used on individuals ages 21 and under.

"The death of Kalief Browder was a wake-up call to this city," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in 2017. "His death shook the whole city and opened everyone's eyes and made people think twice."

These reforms have been praised, but there have been some complications to the city's efforts. Last July, the New York Times reported that while New York City was no longer putting minors in solitary confinement at Rikers, it was allowing people younger than 22 to be transferred to upstate jails that use solitary confinement. More details emerged after young inmates filed a lawsuit in December 2018 saying they were held in isolation and abused after being transferred out of Rikers.

Last September, Politico reported that the city had moved away from efforts to keep 18- to 21-year-olds in Rikers housed separately from the adult general population. The city countered that the move was part of an effort to begin to reduce the city's jail population, adding that in some cases, young adults should be housed with older individuals.

Browder's surviving family members, for their part, argue that the city has not fully honored its stated commitment to reform. Browder's older brother Akeem, a former mayoral candidate, continues to call for the immediate closure of the Rikers Island complex (which the city has said it plans to close by 2027).

Kalief "didn't belong in a place like Rikers, detained from having his high school graduation, detained from being present to see my [other] brother bring his two kids into this world and become an uncle," Akeem Browder told Vox last year. " He shouldn't have been detained and held in the Guantanamo Bay of New York while he's a teen."

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New York's justice system failed Kalief Browder. Now the city will pay his family $3.3 million.

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In 2015, Kalief Browder, a young black man, died by suicide after spending years in pretrial detention and solitary confinement on New York's Rikers Island. More than three years after his death, his estate will receive a settlement from New York City.

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Racial Equality

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Who Was Rosa Parks?

Rosa Parks was a civil rights leader whose refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her bravery led to nationwide efforts to end racial segregation. Parks was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Award by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Early Life and Family

Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Parks was two. Parks' mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama, to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Both of Parks' grandparents were formerly enslaved people and strong advocates for racial equality; the family lived on the Edwards' farm, where Parks would spend her youth.

Parks' childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. In one experience, Parks' grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street.
READ MORE: 16 Rosa Parks Quotes About Civil Rights
Education

Throughout Parks' education, she attended segregated schools. Taught to read by her mother at a young age, Parks attended a segregated, one-room school in Pine Level, Alabama, that often lacked adequate school supplies such as desks. African American students were forced to walk to the first through sixth-grade schoolhouse, while the city of Pine Level provided bus transportation as well as a new school building for white students.

Beginning at age 11, Parks attended the city's Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery. In 1929, while in the 11th grade and attending a laboratory school for secondary education led by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes, Parks left school to attend to both her sick grandmother and mother back in Pine Level.

Parks didn't return to her studies. Instead, she got a job at a shirt factory in Montgomery. After marrying in 1932, she earned her high school degree in 1933 with her husband's support.

Marriage

In 1932, at age 19, Parks met and married Raymond Parks, a barber and an active member of the NAACP.

After graduating high school with Raymond's support, Parks became actively involved in civil rights issues by joining the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, serving as the chapter's youth leader as well as secretary to NAACP President E.D. Nixon - a post she held until 1957. The couple never had children.

Arrest

On December 1, 1955, Parks was arrested for refusing a bus driver's instructions to give up her seat to a white passenger. She later recalled that her refusal wasn't because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in.

After a long day's work at a Montgomery department store, where she worked as a seamstress, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She took a seat in the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers.

The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the code. While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and Black passengers by assigning seats.

This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and African American passengers in the back. When an African American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door.

As the bus Parks was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. The bus driver stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, asking four Black passengers to give up their seats.

The city's bus ordinance didn't specifically give drivers the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of moving back the sign separating Black and white passengers and, if necessary, asking Black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers. If the Black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.

Three of the other Black passengers on the bus complied with the driver, but Parks refused and remained seated. The driver demanded, "Why don't you stand up?" to which Parks replied, "I don't think I should have to stand up." The driver called the police and had her arrested.

The police arrested Parks at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters, where, later that night, she was released on bail.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Members of the African American community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955 - the day of Parks' trial - in protest of her arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, as it came to be known, was a huge success, lasting for 381 days and ending with a Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation on public transit systems to be unconstitutional.

Nixon began forming plans to organize a boycott of Montgomery's city buses on December 1, the evening that Parks was arrested. Ads were placed in local papers, and handbills were printed and distributed in Black neighborhoods.

On the morning of December 5, a group of leaders from the African American community gathered at the Mt. Zion Church in Montgomery to discuss strategies and determined that their boycott effort required a new organization and strong leadership. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing Montgomery newcomer King as minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The MIA believed that Parks' case provided an excellent opportunity to take further action to create real change.

When Parks arrived at the courthouse for trial that morning with her attorney, Fred Gray, she was greeted by a bustling crowd of around 500 local supporters, who rooted her on. Following a 30-minute hearing, Parks was found guilty of violating a local ordinance and was fined $10, as well as a $4 court fee.

Inarguably the biggest event of the day, however, was what Parks' trial had triggered. The city's buses were, by and large, empty. Some people carpooled and others rode in African American-operated cabs, but most of the estimated 40,000 African American commuters living in the city at the time had opted to walk to work that day - some as far as 20 miles.

Due to the size and scope of, and loyalty to, boycott participation, the effort continued for several months. The city of Montgomery had become a victorious eyesore, with dozens of public buses sitting idle, ultimately severely crippling finances for its transit company. With the boycott's progress, however, came strong resistance.

Some segregationists retaliated with violence. Black churches were burned, and both King and E.D. Nixon's homes were destroyed by bombings. Still, further attempts were made to end the boycott. The insurance was canceled for the city taxi system that was used by African Americans. Black citizens were arrested for violating an antiquated law prohibiting boycotts.

In response to the ensuing events, members of the African American community took legal action. Armed with the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which stated that separate but equal policies had no place in public education, a Black legal team took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Northern (Montgomery) Division. Parks' attorney, Fred Gray, filed the suit.

In June 1956, the district court declared racial segregation laws (also known as "Jim Crow laws") unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the court's decision shortly thereafter, but on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, declaring segregation on public transport to be unconstitutional.

With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956. The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American community, made the Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S ROSA PARKS FACT CARD

Life After the Bus Boycott

Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, Parks suffered hardship in the months following her arrest in Montgomery and the subsequent boycott. She lost her department store job and her husband was fired after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or their legal case.

Unable to find work, they eventually left Montgomery and moved to Detroit, Michigan along with Parks' mother. There, Parks made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionist in U.S. Representative John Conyer's congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In 1987, with longtime friend Elaine Eason Steele, Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The organization runs "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country.
READ MORE: Rosa Parks' Life After the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Autobiography and Memoir

In 1992, Parks published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography recounting her life in the segregated South. In 1995, she published Quiet Strength, which includes her memoirs and focuses on the role that religious faith played throughout her life.

Outkast Song

In 1998, the hip-hop group Outkast released a song, "Rosa Parks," which shot up to the top 100 on the Billboard music charts the following year. The song featured the chorus:
"Ah-ha, hush that fuss. Everybody move to the back of the bus."
In 1999, Parks filed a lawsuit against the group and its label alleging defamation and false advertising because Outkast used Parks' name without her permission. Outkast said the song was protected by the First Amendment and did not violate Parks' publicity rights.

In 2003, a judge dismissed the defamation claims. Parks' lawyer soon refiled based on the false advertising claims for using her name without permission, seeking over $5 billion.

On April 14, 2005, the case was settled. Outkast and co-defendants SONY BMG Music Entertainment, Arista Records LLC and LaFace Records admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute to develop educational programs that "enlighten today's youth about the significant role Rosa Parks played in making America a better place for all races," according to a statement released at the time.

Death

On October 24, 2005, Parks quietly died in her apartment in Detroit, Michigan at the age of 92. She had been diagnosed the previous year with progressive dementia, which she had been suffering from since at least 2002.

Parks' death was marked by several memorial services, among them, lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., where an estimated 50,000 people viewed her casket. She was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery, in the chapel's mausoleum. Shortly after her death, the chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel.

Accomplishments and Awards

Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest award, and the prestigious Martin Luther King Jr. Award.

On September 15, 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the United States' executive branch. The following year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch.

TIME magazine named Parks on its 1999 list of "The 20 Most Influential People of the 20th Century."

Remembering Rosa Parks

Museum and Park

In 2000, Troy University created the Rosa Parks Museum, located at the site of her arrest in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. In 2001, the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, consecrated Rosa Parks Circle, a 3.5-acre park designed by Maya Lin, an artist and architect best known for designing the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Movie on Rosa Parks' Life

A biographical movie starring Angela Bassett and directed by Julie Dash, The Rosa Parks Story, was released in 2002. The movie won the 2003 NAACP Image Award, Christopher Award and Black Reel Award.

Commemorative Stamp

February 4, 2013 marked what would have been Parks' 100th birthday. In celebration, a commemorative U.S. Postal Service stamp, called the Rosa Parks Forever stamp and featuring a rendition of the famed activist, debuted.

Statue

Also in February 2013, President Barack Obama unveiled a statue designed by Robert Firmin and sculpted by Eugene Daub honoring Parks in the nation's Capitol building. He remembered Parks, according to The New York Times, by saying "In a single moment, with the simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change the world. . . . And today, she takes her rightful place among those who shaped this nation's course."
Watch "Rosa Parks: Mother Of A Movement" on History Vault

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Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist who refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her defiance sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Its success launched nationwide efforts to end racial segregation of public facilities.

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Women's Right

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg, née Joan Ruth Bader, (born March 15, 1933, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.-died September 18, 2020, Washington, D.C.), associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 to 2020. She was the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Joan Ruth Bader was the younger of the two children of Nathan Bader, a merchant, and Celia Bader. Her elder sister, Marilyn, died of meningitis at the age of six, when Joan was 14 months old. Outside her family, Ginsburg began to go by the name "Ruth" in kindergarten to help her teachers distinguish her from other students named Joan. The Baders were an observant Jewish family, and Ruth attended synagogue and participated in Jewish traditions as a child. She excelled in school, where she was heavily involved in student activities and earned excellent grades.

At about the time when Ruth started high school, Celia was diagnosed with cancer. She died of the disease four years later, just days before Ruth's scheduled graduation ceremony, which Ruth could not attend.

Ruth entered Cornell University on a full scholarship. During her first semester, she met her future husband, Martin ("Marty") Ginsburg, who was also a student at Cornell. Martin, who eventually became a nationally prominent tax attorney, exerted an important influence on Ruth through his strong and sustained interest in her intellectual pursuits. She was also influenced by two other people-both professors-whom she met at Cornell: the author Vladimir Nabokov, who shaped her thinking about writing, and the constitutional lawyer Robert Cushman, who inspired her to pursue a legal career. Martin and Ruth were married in June 1954, nine days after she graduated from Cornell.

After Martin was drafted into the U.S. Army, the Ginsburgs spent two years in Oklahoma, where he was stationed. Their daughter, Jane, their first child, was born during this time. The Ginsburgs then moved to Massachusetts, where Martin resumed-and Ruth began-studies at Harvard Law School. While Ruth completed her coursework and served on the editorial staff of the Harvard Law Review (she was the first woman to do so), she acted as caregiver not only to Jane but also to Martin, who had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. After his recovery, Martin graduated and accepted a job with a law firm in New York City. Ruth completed her legal education at Columbia Law School, serving on the law review and graduating in a tie for first place in her class in 1959.

Despite her excellent credentials, she struggled to find employment as a lawyer, because of her gender and the fact that she was a mother. At the time, only a very small percentage of lawyers in the United States were women, and only two women had ever served as federal judges. However, one of her Columbia law professors advocated on her behalf and helped to convince Judge Edmund Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to offer Ginsburg a clerkship (1959-61). As associate director of the Columbia Law School's Project on International Procedure (1962-63), she studied Swedish civil procedure; her research was eventually published in a book, Civil Procedure in Sweden (1965), cowritten with Anders Bruzelius.

Hired by the Rutgers School of Law as an assistant professor in 1963, she was asked by the dean of the school to accept a low salary because of her husband's well-paying job. After she became pregnant with the couple's second child-a son, James, born in 1965-Ginsburg wore oversized clothes for fear that her contract would not be renewed. She earned tenure at Rutgers in 1969.

In 1970 Ginsburg became professionally involved in the issue of gender equality when she was asked to introduce and moderate a law student panel discussion on the topic of "women's liberation." In 1971 she published two law review articles on the subject and taught a seminar on gender discrimination. As a part of the course, Ginsburg partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to draft briefs in two federal cases. The first (originally brought to her attention by her husband) involved a provision of the federal tax code that denied single men a tax deduction for serving as caregivers to their families. The second involved an Idaho state law that expressly preferred men to women in determining who should administer the estates of people who die without a will ( see intestate succession). The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the latter case, Reed v. Reed (1971), was the first in which a gender-based statute was struck down on the basis of the equal protection clause.

During the remainder of the 1970s, Ginsburg was a leading figure in gender-discrimination litigation. In 1972 she became founding counsel of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project and coauthored a law-school casebook on gender discrimination. In the same year, she became the first tenured female faculty member at Columbia Law School. She authored dozens of law review articles and drafted or contributed to many Supreme Court briefs on the issue of gender discrimination. During the decade, she argued before the Supreme Court six times, winning five cases.

In 1980 Democratic U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, D.C. While serving as a judge on the D.C. Circuit, Ginsburg developed a reputation as a pragmatic liberal with a keen attention to detail. She enjoyed cordial professional relationships with two well-known conservative judges on the court, Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia, and often voted with them. In 1993 she delivered the Madison Lecture at New York University Law School, offering a critique of the reasoning-though not the ultimate holding-of Roe v. Wade (1973), the famous case in which the Supreme Court found a constitutional right of women to choose to have an abortion. Ginsburg argued that the Court should have issued a more limited decision, which would have left more room for state legislatures to address specific details. Such an approach, she claimed, "might have served to reduce rather than to fuel controversy."

On June 14, 1993, Democratic U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton announced his nomination of Ginsburg to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Byron White. Her confirmation hearings were quick and relatively uncontroversial. She was endorsed unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee and confirmed by the full Senate on August 3 by a vote of 96-3.

On the Court, Ginsburg became known for her active participation in oral arguments and her habit of wearing jabots, or collars, with her judicial robes, some of which expressed a symbolic meaning. She identified, for example, both a majority-opinion collar and a dissent collar. Early in her tenure on the Court, Ginsburg wrote the majority's opinion in United States v. Virginia (1996), which held that the men-only admission policy of a state-run university, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), violated the equal protection clause. Rejecting VMI's contention that its program of military-focused education was unsuitable for women, Ginsburg noted that the program was in fact unsuitable for the vast majority of Virginia college students regardless of gender. "[G]eneralizations about 'the way women are,' estimates of what is appropriate for most women, no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description," she wrote.

Although Ginsburg tended to vote with other liberal justices on the Court, she got along well with most of the conservative justices who had been appointed before her. She enjoyed a special connection with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a moderate conservative and the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, and she and conservative Justice Antonin Scalia famously bonded over their shared love of opera (indeed, the American composer-lyricist Derrick Wang wrote a successful comic opera, Scalia/Ginsburg, celebrating their relationship). She praised the work of the first chief justice with whom she served, William Rehnquist, another conservative. Ginsburg had less in common with most of the justices appointed by Republican U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, however.

Ginsburg attracted attention for several strongly worded dissenting opinions and publicly read some of her dissents from the bench to emphasize the importance of the case. Two such decisions in 2007 concerned women's rights. The first, Gonzales v. Carhart, upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act on a 5-4 vote. Ginsburg decried the judgment as "alarming," arguing that it "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right [the right of women to choose to have an abortion] declared again and again by this Court." Similarly, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, another 5-4 decision, Ginsburg criticized the majority's holding that a woman could not bring a federal civil suit against her employer for having paid her less than it had paid men (the plaintiff did not become aware of her right to file suit until after the filing period had passed). Ginsburg argued that the majority's reasoning was inconsistent with the will of the U.S. Congress-a view that was somewhat vindicated when Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the first bill that Democratic U.S. Pres. Barack Obama signed into law.

With the retirements of Justices David Souter in 2009 and John Paul Stevens in 2010, Ginsburg became the most senior justice within the liberal bloc. She wrote dissents articulating liberal perspectives in several more prominent and politically charged cases. Her partial dissent in the Affordable Care Act cases (2012), which posed a constitutional challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as "Obamacare"), criticized her five conservative colleagues for concluding-in her view contrary to decades of judicial precedent-that the commerce clause did not empower Congress to require most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a fine. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court's conservative majority struck down as unconstitutional Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, which had required certain states and local jurisdictions to obtain prior approval ("preclearance") from the federal Justice Department of any proposed changes to voting laws or procedures. Ginsburg, in dissent, criticized the "hubris" of the majority's "demolition of the VRA" and declared that "throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet." Ginsburg was likewise highly critical of the majority's opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014), a decision that recognized the right of for-profit corporations to refuse on religious grounds to comply with the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employers pay for coverage of certain contraceptive drugs and devices in their employees' health insurance plans. Ginsburg wrote that the majority opinion "falters at each step of its analysis" and expressed concern that the Court had "ventured into a minefield" by holding "that commercial enterprises...can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs." Throughout her career Ginsburg concluded her dissents with the phrase "I dissent," rather than the conventional and more common "I respectfully dissent," which she considered an unnecessary (and slightly disingenuous) nicety.

In part because of her increasing outspokenness, Ginsburg became, during the Obama administration (2009-17), a progressive and feminist folk hero. Inspired by some of her dissents, a second-year law student at New York University created a Tumblr blog entitled "Notorious R.B.G."-a play on "Notorious B.I.G.," the stage name of the American rapper Christopher Wallace-which became a popular nickname for Ginsburg among her admirers. Nevertheless, some liberals, citing Ginsburg's advanced age and concerns about her health (she was twice a cancer survivor) and apparent frailty, argued that she should retire in order to allow Obama to nominate a liberal replacement. Others, however, pointed to her vigorous exercise routine and the fact that she had never missed an oral argument to urge that she should remain on the Court for as long as possible. For her own part, Ginsburg expressed her intention to continue for as long as she was able to perform her job "full steam." On the day after Martin Ginsburg died in 2010, she went to work at the Court as usual because, she said, it was what he would have wanted.

In an interview in 2016 Ginsburg expressed dismay at the possibility that Republican candidate Donald Trump would be elected president-a statement that was widely criticized as not in keeping with the Court's tradition of staying out of politics. (Ginsburg later said that she regretted the remark.) Trump's electoral victory renewed criticism of Ginsburg for not having retired while Obama was president. She remained on the Court as its oldest justice, publicly mindful of John Paul Stevens's service until the age of 90.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 to 2020. The second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, she became an articulate representative of liberal perspectives on the Court and eventually the leader of the Court's minority liberal bloc.

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Humanitarian

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Quick Facts

Name

John Cena

Birth Date

April 23, 1977 (age 43)

Education

Springfield College

Place of Birth

West Newbury, Massachusetts

Nickname

The Marky Mark of Wrestling

Full Name

John Felix Anthony Cena

Zodiac Sign

Taurus

Who Is John Cena?

John Cena is a professional wrestler, actor and television personality. Calling himself "The Prototype," he captured the UPW title in 2000. In 2001, he signed a contract to work at Ohio Valley Wrestling. Cena claimed the OVW heavyweight title in February 2002, then made his WWE debut that June. Two years later, he took the United States Championship. The wrestler has since expanded his brand through the release of a hip-hop album and appearances on TV and film.

Early Life

John Felix Anthony Cena was born on April 23, 1977, in West Newbury, Massachusetts, the second of John Sr. and Carol Cena's five boys.

At an early age, Cena showed a passion for sports and working out. By the time he was 15, he was a regular gym rat and after graduating high school, Cena headed off to Springfield College in Massachusetts to study exercise physiology and prove his worth on the football field. At Springfield, Cena turned himself into a Division III All-American offensive lineman and team captain.

In 2000, the new college graduate left Massachusetts despite his father's wishes, seeking a new life in California as a bodybuilder. It wasn't an easy transition for the 6-foot 1-inch aspiring star. He had just $500 in his pocket to make it across the country and get settled. To make ends meet, he folded towels and cleaned toilets at a Gold's Gym in Venice Beach. Since he couldn't afford an apartment, he shacked up in his 1991 Lincoln Continental.

Foray into Wrestling

Cena's turning point came in early 2000, during a casual conversation he had with a wrestler at Gold Gym's who encouraged him to take classes at Ultimate Pro Wrestling (UPW), a former World Wrestling Entertainment developmental company.

For Cena, the suggestion of making a go of it as a wrestler was not an entirely outlandish idea. His father, John Sr. (a.k.a. Johnny Fabulous), made a living as a wrestling announcer and businessman. As a kid growing up in suburban Massachusetts, the younger Cena spent many hours glued to the television set as he watched his wrestling heroes such as Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior and Shawn Michaels go at it in the ring.

As a wrestler himself, Cena's ascension was rapid. Calling himself "The Prototype," the ambitious Cena captured the UPW title on April 27, 2000, in San Diego, California. Over the course of the next year, Cena drew the attention of WWE executives, and in 2001, the young entertainer signed a developmental contract with the company to work at Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW).

WWE Debut and Champion

Cena captured the OVW heavyweight title in February 2002, then made his WWE debut that June when he signed up with the Smackdown roster. Just two years later, Cena took home the United States Championship, defeating The Big Show in March 2004 in Wrestlemania XX.

In the years since, Cena has notched many wins and titles. In 2007, he became the first wrestler to ever come up victorious against Edward "Umaga" Fatu.

Along the way, Cena, whose good looks and sculpted body inspired the nickname "The Marky Mark of Wrestling," greatly increased his celebrity. Like Hogan, Cena proved that his showmanship in the ring translated to success in other venues.

TV, Movies and Music

Through the production wing of WWE, Cena starred in the action films The Marine (2006) and 12 Rounds (2009), the latter featuring the wrestler trying to save his girlfriend from a gang of terrorists in New Orleans.

Album: 'You Can't See Me'

In addition, Cena, who has long had an affinity for hip-hop culture, became a recording artist when his rap album, You Can't See Me, hit record stores in 2005. The recording debuted on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart at No. 15.

'Trainwreck'

In 2015, Cena received critical praise for his acting skills in the hit comedy Trainwreck, directed by Judd Apatow and written by the film's star, Amy Schumer. Cena played Schumer's muscle-bound but sensitive boyfriend. "I got my chance to throw my sense of humor out into the world, and at the same time play this hulky guy who's a softy, which in real life I'm a very emotional guy," Cena told Business Insider. Later that year he appeared in the Tina Fey- Amy Poehler comedy Sisters and had a small role in Daddy's Home.

'Blockers,' 'Bumblebee'

Devoting more time to his screen pursuits, Cena in 2017 co-starred in the war film The Wall, voiced the titular bull of the animated Ferdinand and rejoined Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg for Daddy's Home 2. The following year, he enjoyed a prominent role in the raunchy comedy Blockers, before returning to action fare with the Transformers spinoff Bumblebee. Cena then joined Keegan-Michael Key and John Leguizamo to play a trio of wildfire fighters flummoxed by unruly kids in the 2019 family comedy Playing with Fire.

'Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?' Host

Also in 2019, it was announced that Cena would host a new version of the game show Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, a gig previously belonging to comedian Jeff Foxworthy. Prior to its debut in June, Cena pointed out the similarities between entertaining audiences as a wrestler and as a TV personality, and said the latest version of the show would focus more on the kids than the adult contestants.

Personal Life

Cena married his girlfriend, Elizabeth Huberdeau, in July 2009. In May 2012, Cena filed for divorce, allegedly shocking Huberdeau. Their messy separation played out in the media, but they eventually settled in July of that year.

In 2012, Cena began dating fellow WWE superstar Nikki Bella. On April 2, 2017, he proposed to Bella after they defeated The Miz and Maryse in a tag team match at Wrestlemania 33. Cena and Bella ended their engagement in April 2018, and briefly reconciled before it was reported that they had again gone their separate ways.

The following year, the wrestler turned actor began dating engineer Shay Shariatzadeh. The pair was married in October 2020.

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Name John Cena Birth Date April 23, 1977 (age 43) Education Springfield College Place of Birth West Newbury, Massachusetts Nickname The Marky Mark of Wrestling Full Name John Felix Anthony Cena Zodiac Sign Taurus John Cena is a professional wrestler, actor and television personality. Calling himself "The Prototype," he captured the UPW title in 2000.

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Chinese American Actor

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Synopsis

Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, California. He was a child actor in Hong Kong who later returned to the U.S. and taught martial arts. He starred in the TV series The Green Hornet (1966-67) and became a major box office draw in The Chinese Connection and Fists of Fury. Shortly before the release of his film Enter the Dragon, he died at the age of 32 on July 20, 1973.

Background and Early Career

Iconic actor, director and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee was born Lee Jun Fan on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, California, in both the hour and year of the Dragon. His father, Lee Hoi Chuen, a Hong Kong opera singer, moved with his wife, Grace Ho, and three children to the United States in 1939; Hoi Chuen's fourth child, a son, was born while he was on tour in San Francisco.

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Lee received the name "Bruce" from a nurse at his birthing hospital, and his family never used the name during his preschool years. The future star appeared in his first film at the age of 3 months, when he served as the stand-in for an American baby in Golden Gate Girl (1941).

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In the early 1940s, the Lees moved back to Hong Kong, then occupied by the Japanese. Apparently a natural in front of the camera, Bruce Lee appeared in roughly 20 films as a child actor, beginning in 1946. He also studied dance, winning Hong Kong's cha-cha competition, and would become known for his poetry as well.

As a teenager, he was taunted by British students for his Chinese background and later joined a street gang. In 1953, he began to hone his passions into a discipline, studying kung fu (referred to as "gung fu" in Cantonese) under the tutelage of Master Yip Man. By the end of the decade, Lee moved back to the U.S. to live with family friends outside Seattle, Washington, initially taking up work as a dance instructor.

Devoted Teacher

Lee finished high school in Edison, Washington, and subsequently enrolled as a philosophy major at the University of Washington. He also got a job teaching the Wing Chun style of martial arts that he had learned in Hong Kong to his fellow students and others. Through his teaching, Lee met Linda Emery, whom he married in 1964. By that time, Lee had opened his own martial-arts school in Seattle.

He and Linda soon moved to California, where Lee opened two more schools in Oakland and Los Angeles. He taught mostly a style he called Jeet Kune Do, or "The Way of the Intercepting Fist." Lee was said to have deeply loved being an instructor and treated his students like a clan, ultimately choosing the world of cinema as a career so as not to unduly commercialize teaching.

Lee and Linda also expanded their immediate family, having two children -- Brandon, born in 1965, and Shannon, born in 1969.

Action Hero

Lee gained a measure of celebrity with his role in the television series The Green Hornet, which aired in 26 episodes from 1966 to '67. In the show, which was based on a 1930s radio program, the wiry Lee displayed his acrobatic and theatrical fighting style as the Hornet's sidekick, Kato. He went on to make guest appearances in such TV shows as Ironside and Longstreet, while a notable film role came in 1969's Marlowe, starring James Garner as the notable detective created by Raymond Chandler. (The screenwriter for the film, Stirling Silliphant, was one of Lee's martial arts students. Other Lee students included James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Garner himself.)

Lee, who was devoted to a variety of workouts and physical training activities, suffered a major back injury that he gradually recovered from, taking time for self-care and writing. He also came up with the idea that became the basis for the Buddhist monk TV series Kung Fu; however, David Carradine would get the starring role initially slated for Lee due to the belief that an Asian actor wouldn't pull in audiences as the lead. Confronted with a dearth of meaty roles and the prevalence of stereotypes regarding Asian performers, Lee left Los Angeles for Hong Kong in the summer of 1971.

Breaking Box Office Records

Lee signed a two-film contract, eventually bringing his family over to Hong Kong as well. The Big Boss, aka Fists of Fury in the U.S., was released in 1971 and featured Lee as the factory worker hero who has sworn off fighting yet enters combat to confront a murderous drug smuggling operation. Combining his smooth Jeet Kune Do athleticism with the high-energy theatrics of his performance in The Green Hornet, Lee was the charismatic center of the film, which set new box office records in Hong Kong.

Those records were broken by Lee's next film, Fist of Fury, aka The Chinese Connection (1972), which, like The Big Boss, received poor reviews from some critics upon the U.S. release.

By the end of 1972, Lee was a major movie star in Asia. He had co-founded with Raymond Chow his own company, Concord Productions, and had released his first directorial feature, Return of the Dragon. Though he had not yet gained stardom in America, he was poised on the brink with his first major Hollywood project, Enter the Dragon.

Mysterious Death

On July 20, 1973, just one month before the premiere of Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong, China, at the age of 32. The official cause of his sudden and utterly unexpected death was a brain edema, found in an autopsy to have been caused by a strange reaction to a prescription painkiller he was reportedly taking for a back injury. Controversy surrounded Lee's death from the beginning, as some claimed he had been murdered. There was also the belief that he might have been cursed, a conclusion driven by Lee's obsession with his own early death.

More rumors of the so-called curse circulated in 1993, when Brandon Lee was killed under mysterious circumstances during the filming of The Crow. The 28-year-old actor was fatally shot with a gun that supposedly contained blanks but somehow had a live round lodged deep within its barrel.

Legacy

With the posthumous release of Enter the Dragon, Lee's status as a film icon was confirmed. The film, said to have a budget of $1 million, went on to gross more than $200 million. Lee's legacy helped pave the way for broader depictions of Asian Americans in cinema and created a whole new breed of action hero -- a mold filled with varying degrees of success by actors like Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and Jackie Chan.

Lee's life has been depicted in the 1993 film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, based on the 1975 Linda Lee memoir Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew, and the 2009 documentary How Bruce Lee Changed the World. And in the summer of 2013, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum opened the exhibition "Bruce Lee: Kung Fu. Art. Life."

Lee's legacy as a premier martial artist continues to be revered as well. Daughter Shannon Lee was largely involved in the 2011 update of her father's instructional guide Tao of Jeet Kune Do.

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Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, California. He was a child actor in Hong Kong who later returned to the U.S. and taught martial arts. He starred in the TV series The Green Hornet (1966-67) and became a major box office draw in The Chinese Connection and Fists of Fury.

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Athlete

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Who Was Kobe Bryant?

Kobe Bryant spent his early years in Italy and joined the NBA straight out of high school. A dominant scorer, Bryant won five NBA championships and the 2008 MVP Award with the Los Angeles Lakers. Although later seasons were marred by injuries, he surpassed Michael Jordan for third place on the NBA all-time scoring list in December 2014 and retired in 2016 after scoring 60 points in his final game. In 2018, Bryant earned an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for Dear Basketball. On January 26, 2020, he was in a helicopter crash that killed Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gigi and seven others.

Early Life

Kobe Bean Bryant was born on August 23, 1978, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Named after a city in Japan, Bryant is the son of former NBA player Joe "Jellybean" Bryant.

In 1984, after ending his NBA career, the elder Bryant took the family to Italy, where he played in the Italian League. Growing up in Italy alongside two athletic older sisters, Shaya and Sharia, Bryant was an avid player of both basketball and soccer. When the family returned to Philadelphia in 1991, Bryant joined the Lower Merion High School basketball team, leading it to the state championships four years in a row. With an eye on the NBA, he also started working out with the 76ers.

Though he boasted good grades and high SAT scores, Bryant decided to go straight to the NBA from high school. He was selected by the Charlotte Hornets with the 13th overall pick of the 1996 NBA draft and was subsequently traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.

NBA Career and Stats

In his second season with the Lakers, Bryant was voted a starter for the 1998 All-Star Game, becoming the youngest All-Star in NBA history at 19. The shooting guard then teamed up with superstar center Shaquille O'Neal to win three consecutive NBA championships and was voted first-team all-NBA from 2002-2004. He also inked multi-year endorsement deals with Adidas, Sprite and other top sponsors.

Although the Lakers struggled after O'Neal left in 2004, Bryant performed brilliantly. He scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors in January 2006, the second-highest single-game mark in NBA history, and led the league in scoring that year and the next.

In 2008, Bryant was named Most Valuable Player and carried his team to the NBA Finals, where they lost to the Boston Celtics. In the 2009 NBA Finals, the Lakers beat the Orlando Magic to win the championship. Shortly afterward, Bryant was part of the memorial service to honor friend and music superstar Michael Jackson. The following year, the Lakers won their second straight title by defeating the Celtics.

Bryant played on both the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Olympic teams, winning consecutive gold medals with teammates Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, among several other top players.

After suffering a torn Achilles tendon in April 2013, Bryant worked hard to return to the court before fracturing his knee just six games into the 2013-2014 season. The veteran All-Star surpassed Michael Jordan for third all-time on the NBA scoring list in December 2014, but his season ended due to injury for the third straight year when he sustained a torn rotator cuff in January 2015.

Photo: Harry How/Getty Images

Retirement

Although Bryant returned in time for the start of the 2015-2016 NBA season, he personally struggled alongside his young Lakers teammates. In November 2015, he announced that he would retire at the end of the season. "This season is all I have left to give," he wrote on The Players' Tribune website. "My heart can take the pounding. My mind can handle the grind but my body knows it's time to say goodbye."

The announcement drew a strong reaction, particularly from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. "With 17 NBA All-Star selections, an NBA MVP, five NBA championships with the Lakers, two Olympic gold medals and a relentless work ethic, Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest players in the history of our game," Silver said in a statement. "Whether competing in the finals or hoisting jump shots after midnight in an empty gym, Kobe has an unconditional love for the game."

On April 13, 2016, Bryant dazzled a sold-out crowd at the Staples Center and fans everywhere in the last game of his career, scoring 60 points and leading the Lakers to a win against the Utah Jazz. It was Bryant's sixth 60-point game of his career.

After the game, Bryant spoke to the crowd. "I can't believe how fast 20 years went by," he said. "This is absolutely crazy ... and to be standing at center court with you guys, my teammates behind me, appreciating the journey that we've been on - we've been through our ups, been through our downs. I think the most important part is we all stayed together throughout."

An all-star lineup of Laker icons also paid tribute to Bryant, including O'Neal, Phil Jackson, Pau Gasol, Derek Fisher, Lamar Odom and Magic Johnson. "We are here to celebrate greatness for 20 years," Johnson said. "Excellence for 20 years. Kobe Bryant has never cheated the game, never cheated us as the fans. He has played through injury, he has played hurt. And we have five championship banners to show for it."

Academy Award for 'Dear Basketball'

In November 2015, Bryant announced his upcoming retirement from the Lakers with a poem on The Players' Tribune website, titled "Dear Basketball." The athletic great soon sought the best in other fields to turn his poem into a short film, including Disney animator Glen Keane and composer John Williams.

The result was a beautifully rendered five-minute, 20-second film, which debuted at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. Oscar voters took note, leading to the unexpected sight of Bryant accepting an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 2018 ceremony.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's short films and animation branch also extended an invitation for Bryant to become a member of the organization. However, in June 2018 it was revealed that the Academy's governors committee had rescinded the invitation, saying the retired basketball great needed to show more efforts in the field before being considered for membership.

Sexual Assault Charge

In July 2003, Bryant was charged with one count of sexual assault on a 19-year-old female hotel worker in Colorado. Bryant said he was guilty of adultery but innocent of the rape charge. The case against Bryant was dismissed in 2004, and he settled the civil lawsuit filed by the hotel worker against him out of court.

Philanthropy

Among his philanthropic endeavors, the basketball great partnered with the non-profit After-School All-Stars as part of the Kobe & Vanessa Bryant Family Foundation. He also ran an annual summer camp called the Kobe Basketball Academy.

Photo: Maxx Wolfson/Getty Images

Wife and Children

Bryant married 19-year-old Vanessa Laine in April 2001. The couple became parents to four daughters: Natalia Diamante (b. 2003), Gianna Maria-Onore (b. 2006, d. 2020), Bianka (b. 2016) and Capri (b. 2019).

Death in a Helicopter Crash

On January 26, 2020, Bryant was onboard a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter that crashed in the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas. Nine people, including Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna "Gigi," died. The helicopter was on its way from Orange County to Thousands Oaks, California where Bryant was scheduled to coach a tournament game at Mamba Sports Academy.

"We are completely devastated by the sudden loss of my adoring husband, Kobe - the amazing father of our children; and my beautiful, sweet Gianna - a loving, thoughtful, and wonderful daughter, and amazing sister to Natalia, Bianka, and Capri," Bryant's wife Vanessa posted on Instagram. "There aren't enough words to describe our pain right now. I take comfort in knowing that Kobe and Gigi both knew that they were so deeply loved. We were so incredibly blessed to have them in our lives. I wish they were here with us forever. They were our beautiful blessings taken from us too soon."

Bryant and his daughter were laid to rest in a private funeral on February 7, 2020. On February 24, they were honored in a memorial service at the Staples Center, with Beyoncé and Alicia Keys delivering musical tributes and Jordan, Shaq and Vanessa Bryant among those sharing emotional recollections of the basketball great and family man.

On April 4, 2020, Bryant was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

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Kobe Bryant spent his early years in Italy and joined the NBA straight out of high school. A dominant scorer, Bryant won five NBA championships and the 2008 MVP Award with the Los Angeles Lakers.

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Athlete

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Who Is LeBron James?

LeBron James is an American basketball player with the Los Angeles Lakers. James first garnered national attention as the top high school basketball player in the country. With his unique combination of size, athleticism and court vision, he became a four-time NBA MVP. After leading the Miami Heat to titles in 2012 and 2013, James returned to Cleveland and helped the franchise claim its first championship in 2016.

Early Life and High School Basketball Career

James was born on December 30, 1984, in Akron, Ohio. At an early age, James showed a natural talent for basketball. He was recruited by St. Vincent-St. Mary High School to join their basketball team in 1999. Overall, James scored 2,657 points, 892 rebounds and 523 assists during his four years there.

As a freshman, James averaged 18 points per game. He helped the team to a Division III state title by scoring 25 points in the championship game. Word of his advanced basketball skills spread, and James received several honors for his performance.

As a high school sophomore, James was chosen for the USA Today All-USA First Team. He was the first sophomore ever selected for this award. His team also won the Division III state title for the second year in a row.

The following school year, James was named PARADE magazine's High School Boys Basketball Player of the Year and Gatorade Player of the Year. Following the end of his junior year, James was such a strong player that he contemplated going pro.

Deciding to finish his education, James had a tremendous senior year on the court. He averaged 31.6 points per game, helping his team clinch their third state title. The St. Vincent-St. Mary High School team also earned the top national ranking that year. James would soon emerge as one of the National Basketball Association's leading players.

Draft

With his impressive record, it was no surprise that James was the first player picked in the 2003 NBA Draft straight out of high school. The Cleveland Cavaliers signed the powerful young forward, and he proved to be a valuable addition to the then-struggling franchise. The team had ended the previous season in eighth place in the Eastern Conference.

Cleveland Cavaliers

During the 2003-04 season, James made history when he became the first member of the Cavalier franchise to win the NBA Rookie of the Year Award. He also became the youngest player - at only 20 years old - to receive this honor.

Additionally, James, averaging 20 points per game at this time, became one of only three rookies to accomplish this feat, putting him in the same company as Michael Jordan and Oscar Robertson.

James continued to excel professionally in the NBA the following season, upping his average points per game to 27.2. He made NBA history again in 2005 when he became the youngest player to score more than 50 points in one game.

In 2006, James helped his team defeat the Washington Wizards in the first round of playoff action. From there, the Cavaliers took on the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference semifinals. James scored an average of 26.6 per game in this postseason matchup, but it wasn't enough to secure victory for his team. While his team wasn't at the top of the rankings, James himself continued to receive special recognition for his abilities.

In 2006, James reached a new contract agreement with the Cavaliers. The team proved to be stronger competitors the following season, defeating Detroit to win the Eastern Conference. In the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs, however, the Cavaliers lost their championship bid in four consecutive games.

During the 2007-08 season, James continued to help the Cavaliers improve their standing in the Eastern Conference. The team made it to the semifinals, where they were defeated by the Boston Celtics in seven games. In terms of individual performance, James had a stellar year, outperforming such rival players as Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson by scoring an average of 30 points per game, the highest average in the NBA regular season.

Early in the 2008-09 season, sports journalists and fans began talking about James' future in the sport. He had the option to become a free agent in 2010, and there was much discussion as to where James would end up. Some journalists identified the New York Knicks as a potential suitor for the rising player.

James made several references to his impending free-agent status, but he was sure to downplay the matter. "I am focused on the team that I am on right now and winning a championship ... I don't think about making a change at this point," James told reporters.

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Miami Heat

Shortly after becoming a free agent, James announced that he would be joining the Miami Heat for the 2010-11 season. His fans in Cleveland were less than pleased, and many considered his departure a betrayal to his hometown.

Soon after James' announcement, Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert wrote an open letter declaring James' decision as "selfish," "heartless" and a "cowardly betrayal." Unfazed, James finished second in the league during his first season with the Heat, scoring 26.7 points per game.

The 2011-12 season saw major success for James and the Miami Heat. With his team's victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals, the superstar forward finally earned his first title. In the clinching Game 5, James scored 26 points, and had 11 rebounds and 13 assists. "I made a difficult decision to leave Cleveland, but I understood what my future was about," James told FOX Sports following the game. "I knew we had a bright future [in Miami]."

During the 2012-13 season, James made NBA history yet again: On January 16, 2013, at age 28, he became the youngest player to score 20,000 points, succeeding Bryant of the Lakers - who accomplished this feat when he was 29 - and becoming only the 38th player in NBA history to achieve this distinction. James made a jump shot the final seconds of the game, bringing his scoring total 20,001 and leading the Heat to a 92-75 victory over the Warriors.

Success followed the Heat to the end of the 2012-13 season: Following a hard-fought, six-game series against the Indiana Pacers to win the Eastern Conference, Miami outlasted the San Antonio Spurs in seven games to win its second consecutive NBA championship.

At the culmination of the 2013-14 season, Miami returned to the NBA Finals to face off against the Spurs again, this time losing to San Antonio after five games.

Return to Cleveland Cavaliers

In July of 2014, after opting out of his contract with the Heat and considering other teams, James announced that he would be returning to the Cavaliers.

Hampered by back and knee problems, James missed 13 of 82 regular-season games in 2014-15. However, he was as dominant as ever when healthy, averaging 25.3 points and 7.4 assists per game. James led the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals, becoming the first player in nearly 50 years to reach the championship round in five consecutive seasons. However, injuries to star teammates Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving damaged his hopes of claiming a third title, and the Cavaliers lost to the Golden State Warriors in six games.

Over the course of 2015-16, the Cavs overcame the distraction of a mid-season coaching change and breezed through the playoffs to earn a rematch with the Warriors, marking the sixth straight NBA Finals appearance for "King James." In perhaps the crowning achievement of his career, he led his team back from a 3-1 deficit, scoring 41 points in both Games 5 and 6, before recording a triple-double in Game 7 to give the Cavs their first championship in franchise history.

Voted Finals MVP, James said, "I came back to bring a championship to our city. I knew what I was capable of doing. I knew what I learned in the last couple years that I was gone, and I knew if I had to - when I came back - I knew I had the right ingredients and the right blueprint to help this franchise get back to a place that we've never been. That's what it was all about."

The following year, James again paced himself and took charge when necessary, driving the Cavs through the Eastern Conference to make an incredible seventh consecutive appearance in the NBA Finals. This time, with former MVP Kevin Durant added to the mix, the Warriors proved too formidable for James and his teammates, claiming the championship in five games.

For all his accomplishments, James achieved another first early in the 2017-18 NBA season: After yelling at a referee during a late November win over the Heat, he was ejected for the first time in 1,082 career games.

The superstar likely felt like yelling often during the course of a frustrating campaign, as an offseason trade that sent Irving to Boston for Isaiah Thomas failed to bear fruit and forced the Cavs to make another major deal before the All-Star break.

After averaging a career-best 9.1 assists in the regular season, James had to dig deep just to get the team out of the first round of the playoffs, delivering a brilliant 45-point effort to sink the Pacers in Game 7. The Cavs were again pushed to the limit two rounds later by the scrappy Celtics, but James scored 81 points over the last two games to pull out the series win and make his eighth straight NBA Finals appearance.

Game 1 of the rematch against Golden State went down to the wire, thanks to James's 51-point outburst, but Cleveland guard J.R. Smith inexplicably dribbled out the clock with the game tied in regulation, before the Warriors pulled away for the win in overtime. That represented the Cavs' best chance to get a leg up on their opponents, as the Warriors won the next three games handily to claim their third title in four years.

Afterward, with questions swirling about his future with the team, James revealed that he had played out the series with a broken right hand after punching a whiteboard in the aftermath of the Game 1 loss.

Los Angeles Lakers

On July 1, 2018, James announced that he was moving on to the next chapter of his career by signing a 4-year, $153.3 million contract with the Los Angeles Lakers, a storied franchise that counted Bryant, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson among its all-time greats.

The good vibes had worn off by midseason, as the Lakers sputtered through a 17-game stretch without their injured star.

With the team still struggling in late February 2019, James accused his teammates of losing focus over trade rumors, saying, "If you're still allowing distractions to affect the way you play, this is the wrong franchise to be a part of and you should just come in and be like, 'Listen, I can't do this.'"

When the Lakers were officially eliminated from playoff contention in March 2019, it snapped James' personal marks of 13 consecutive postseasons and eight straight NBA Finals appearances. Capping a difficult first season in Los Angeles, the Lakers announced that their star would miss the final six games because of his lingering groin injury.

Things got off to a much better start the following season, thanks in large part to the addition of athletic big man Anthony Davis to the roster. Spearheading the Lakers' rise to the top of the standings was James, who became the first player to record a triple-double against all 30 NBA teams in November 2019.

The following month, James added another accolade to his ever-growing list by earning AP Male Athlete of the Decade honors.

Championships and Rings

James participated in eight straight NBA championships from the 2010-11 season to the 2018-19 season. During that time, he captured three championship rings: twice with the Heat (2011-12 and 2012-13) and once with the Cavaliers (2015-16).

All-Star Games and MVPs

James was selected for the NBA All-Star Game for the first time in 2005 and would go on to earn a spot in the annual showcase in each of the next 15 seasons.

In January 2018, the NBA announced that James and Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry had topped the ballots and would serve as captains for that year's All-Star Game.

In 2006, James was named the Most Valuable Player in the NBA All-Star Game, a feat he would repeat in 2008 and 2018. James has also been named NBA MVP four times, in seasons 2008-09, 2009-10, 2011-12 and 2012-13.

Stats and Points

In January 2018, at age 33, James surpassed Bryant as the youngest player to accumulate 30,000 career points and became the seventh player in NBA history to achieve that milestone. The feat put him just more than 8,000 points shy of Abdul-Jabbar's all-time record of 38,387 points.

In 2019, James surpassed Jordan's career tally of 32,292 points to move into fourth place on the all-time list. In January 2020, he eclipsed Bryant's total of 33,643 points to slide into third place, one night before his predecessor's shocking death in a helicopter accident.

After 16 NBA seasons, James' stats included regular season per-game averages of:

27.2 points

38.6 minutes

0.736 free-throw percentage

0.343 3-point field-goal percentage

0.504 field-goal percentage

1.2 offensive rebounds

6.2 defensive rebounds

7.2 assists

0.8 blocks

1.6 steals

3.5 turnovers

Olympic Games

James competed on the U.S. Olympic basketball team during three Summer Olympic Games, in 2004, 2008 and 2012. James made his Olympic debut at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece. He and his teammates won bronze medals after defeating Lithuania. Argentina took home the gold after beating Italy in the finals.

In the summer of 2008, James traveled to Beijing, China, to play with the likes of Bryant, Jason Kidd and Dwyane Wade on the U.S. Olympic basketball team. This time around the U.S. team brought home the gold after defeating Spain in the final round.

James competed at his third Olympic Games in 2012, at the Summer Olympics in London, along with Durant, Bryant, Carmelo Anthony and several other top players. The U.S. basketball team took the gold medal - James' second consecutive Olympic gold.

Contract With Nike

In 2003, James signed several endorsement deals, including a deal with Nike for $90 million that could net him over $1 billion over his lifetime.

Other endorsements include Intel, Verizon, Coca-Cola, Beats by Dre and Kia Motors.

Salary and Earnings

In the 2016-17 season, James collected a $31 million salary, making him the third player to earn that much after Jordan and Bryant. The NBA superstar went on to sign a four-year, $153.3 million contract with the Lakers in July 2018. He's also a co-owner of the production company SpringHill Entertainment and has invested in Blaze Pizza.

In February 2019, Forbes magazine's estimated James' yearly earnings at $88.7 million, making him the NBA's highest-earning player for the fifth year in a row.

Wife and Kids

On January 1, 2012, James proposed to his high school sweetheart, Savannah Brinson. The couple married in a private ceremony with about 200 guests in San Diego on September 14, 2013.

James and Brinson have two sons and one daughter together. In October 2004, James welcomed his first son LeBron Jr. On June 14, 2007, Brinson gave birth to their second son, Bryce Maximus James. Their third child, daughter Zhuri James, was born on October 22, 2014.

LeBron James Family Foundation

Outside of the NBA, James has worked to help others. He established the LeBron James Family Foundation in 2004, along his mother Gloria, to help out children and single-parent families in need.

Among its many programs, the organization builds playgrounds in economically disadvantaged areas and hosts an annual bike-a-thon.

Outspoken Posts on Social Media

One of the world's most recognizable athletes, James hasn't been shy about expressing his views on social media. Among other issues, he displayed his support for Trayvon Martin after the teen's death in 2012, and he has clashed with U.S. President Donald Trump.

James waded into delicate territory in October 2019, after Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey posted a tweet in support of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters that ignited a Chinese media boycott of NBA preseason games in the country. James said he believed Morey was "misinformed" about the situation, although he later tweeted that he mainly took issue with the executive posting comments that could have exposed traveling players to danger.

The basketball superstar has also shown a playful side on social media, such as when he posted a picture of cartoon character Arthur clenching his first during the Cavaliers' slow start to the 2017-18 season.

'Space Jam 2'

James starred in Space Jam 2, the 2021 sequel to the 1996 hit starring Jordan. "The Space Jam collaboration is so much more than just me and the Looney Tunes getting together and doing this movie," James told The Hollywood Reporter.

"It's so much bigger. I'd just love for kids to understand how empowered they can feel and how empowered they can be if they don't just give up on their dreams."

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LeBron James became an immediate star after skipping college to join the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers. He led the Miami Heat to NBA titles in 2012 and 2013 and won another championship with Cleveland in 2016, before joining the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018.

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